Where the Sky is High
by scriveyner
Summary: So when Gotou opened his eyes to an unfamiliar sky, pain throbbing through his temples and his limbs feeling slightly heavier than normal, the only thing that came immediately to mind was: goddammit, Masayoshi. [MMO AU/NaNoWriMo 2015]
1. Chapter 1

Being friends with Hazama Masayoshi brought with it a certain level of acceptance of the deeply unusual. Whether it be people transforming into strange creatures, __kaijuu-__ level monster rampages through the city, or a straight-up alien invasion; Gotou Hidenori had long since made his peace with the fact that his definition of 'normal' had been forever altered. Despite Masayoshi's assurances that the weirdness was behind them now, Gotou's doubts remained firmly in place.

But, to his surprise — life did indeed level out. After a few brief hiccups (brought about by the odd, randomly-occurring, dangerously obsessed middle school student), things seemed to settle into some modicum of — dare he say it — __normalcy.__ Okay, so Masayoshi was sleeping on a shelf in his closet, and Gotou was having to take a lot more cold showers than he remembered, but hey. At least there weren't any public-endangering exploding monsters straight out of a __tokusatsu__ serial in their lives any longer.

So when Gotou opened his eyes to an unfamiliar sky, pain throbbing through his temples and his limbs feeling slightly heavier than normal, the only thing that came immediately to mind was: __well … fuck__.

That, and __I goddamned knew something was going to happen.__

Gotou sat up slowly, his head pounding like he'd had a long night with the tequila bottle. He hadn't been drinking, not that he could __remember__ — his memory was strangely fuzzy; blank and patchy — but as far as he __could__ remember it had been a normal winter evening in. He had come home to find Masayoshi already returned for the night, having stolen Gotou's favorite hooded sweatshirt because it was warm ("that's __mine,__ Masayoshi, don't steal my clothes!" "You could wear mine if you want, Gotou-san! We're close to the same size, you fit into my costum-" " _ _That's not the point!"__ ) and sitting cross-legged on the forbidden zone of Gotou's bed, his own laptop open on his lap. As of late Masayoshi had been obsessed with a game that had arrived in his email in-box one day. He'd dragged Gotou into playing it with him upon occasion, and most anyone else he could puppy-dog-eye as well. (Miraculously, Ishihara, Masayoshi's manager, was completely immune to this trick in Masayoshi's repertoire. Gotou had been meaning to ask what method she used because he fell for it __every time.__ Without fail.)

The fucking __game.__

Gotou held up his strangely-heavy hands and stared at the metal gauntlets he was wearing, and then looked up at the unfamiliar sky. It was blue, but not quite the right __shade__ of blue, too purple — and while the sun was out and at its zenith; casting his seated shadow long across the grass there was something __else__ in the sky too, unnatural, glittering and jutting at an angle up from the horizon until it faded out of perception into the sky above. The Tower of Eternity. " __Fuck__ ," Gotou said aloud, sounding far calmer than he was. He opened and closed his hands, listening to the soft sound of leather and metal flex.

This was __not__ actually happening to him.

He stood up in the grass, and felt the weight of the armor as he shifted his stance. Gotou woke on a grassy slope, not far from a dirt path, its ground well-packed from the many thousands of feet that had run across it. His movements made a grazing creature raise its head — a boar of some kind, but much larger, its head easily coming to Gotou's chest. It looked at him curiously for a moment, chewing, and then lowered its head to continue grazing.

Gotou exhaled, a little shaky. He was startled by the sudden three-dimensional appearance of the creature. It didn't seem to find him of any interest, which was great given that Gotou was __reasonably__ sure it could bite his head off in one go if it were so inclined. "Fuck," Gotou said again, taking a few steps back and then staggering when his limbs moved easier than he expected, given the weight of the armor he was wearing. The beast continued to ignore him and started to amble away, head down in the grass.

What the hell were those things called, anyway? Gotou had not paid undue attention to the world behind the game, or its almost-creatures' names. Gotou rubbed his hand over his chin, looking around and instantly regretting his very casual stance toward this thing that Masayoshi had all but bullied him into signing up for. He had no idea where he was, or what was going on — but it certainly wasn't __normal__ to wake up in a goddamned __MMO__ , of that much he was certain.

Out of a mild curiosity, Gotou pinched his face between two metal fingers and winced instantly. Yeah, this was really happening to him. Of __course__ it was.

He looked up and down the well-worn path. It curved down the slope of the hill and around a larger hill, out of sight — but in the distance he could see a body of water, sunlight glittering across its surface, far too blue and clean and not resembling any body of water Gotou had ever seen in reality. The other direction led up the hill, where the path split: one fork leading toward where the scrub transitioned to actual forest, mountains rearing behind it; the other fork disappearing over the crest of the hill.

As Gotou stood there indecisive, two people appeared out of the forest at a dead run. He watched as they cut across to the other fork, never slowing down nor acknowledging anything — and nothing emerged from the forest to explain their haste. He couldn't make out any details from this distance, but he could see that there was something floating over their heads, almost like a status bar. Curious now, Gotou glanced back at the boar-creature, which had lumbered some distance away, grazing contentedly. It had no such information, and he still wasn't intent on getting too close because again, it could easily bite his head off.

It seemed like the best bet at the moment was going to be either over the crest of the hill or toward the forest. Gotou moved to the path, and as he passed the boar creature he waved at it in acknowledgment, and then felt silly. The moment the palm of his hand passed over the boar, between him and it a little status bar popped up.

"Are you __kidding__ me?" Gotou asked aloud, pausing. He held his hand out, as if he was selecting the boar with a cursor — and sure enough, a status bar with health and hit points popped up. The creature — identified now as a tog — lifted its head and stared dully at him. Gotou dropped his hand, rubbed his face again and looked up the path.

" _ _Really__ hope that I'm not lying in a hospital bed concussed," Gotou muttered. "Because that would just __figure.__ " He nodded at the boar again, and started up the bath at a brisk trot.

To his surprise, he moved quicker than he thought he would at that speed. It was not a dead run, like the people he had seen in the distance, but definitely more than the job he would usually do when working out, taking a morning run with Masayoshi because he wasn't allowed to sleep in if Masayoshi was up. The weight of his armor didn't seem to affect him, either — he could __feel__ it, but it had no bearing on his endurance. Weird, but not as weird as the fact he was in a fucking computer game, so he wasn't going to complain.

Gotou didn't really have much of a plan in place just yet. The first thing he needed to do was find an area where players congregated. Each mapped zone in the game had a main fortress that funneled the players toward the quests that would help them level their player-characters, and that would be the best place to start seeing if anyone else was currently in the same boat that he was. Once he'd established that baseline, the next item of business would be locating Masayoshi; because he was one hundred and fifteen percent sure that Masayoshi was trapped in this game somewhere too. Then, he was going to kick Masayoshi's __ass__ , because __goddammit__ , it was the fucking __weekend__ , and he was not going to spend his weekend and only time off trying to figure out how the fuck to survive in an MMO.

 _ _Fuck__. He needed a cigarette.

The alert tone startled him out of his reverie, and Gotou stopped dead in his tracks. A map had materialized in the air in front of him although it resembled a radar more than a map. He stared at it, recognizing the layout after a moment's confusion — and then realized that the alert meant he had been tagged by an aggressive monster. Gotou stared at the red dot getting closer to him, and then looked up and saw a __huge__ wolf barreling down the path straight toward him, jaws open and snarling.

"Oh," Gotou said. " _ _Fuck.__ "

* * *

The good news, Gotou thought as he sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the winged obelisk, was that the in-game mechanics still seemed to exist and apply to him. He could see his health bar at the moment, one hand out to look at his profile in this strange facsimile of a dashboard he could conjure at will. His poor health bar was pretty much empty, but it was slowly replenishing as he sat in front of the resurrection obelisk. The __bad__ news was that getting mauled by a rabid worg hurt exactly as much as he'd expected it to.

Well, at least death was temporary in the game mechanics. He did have that going for him, at least.

The virtual dashboard looked different from what he had seen on his computer screen. With Masayoshi supervising, Gotou had set up his dashboard to access spells and attacks, scrolls and potions to buff his character, and other various forms of miscellany. It took Gotou a few minutes of tapping the air in front of him trying to figure out how to navigate it — something which, surprisingly, didn't earn him any strange looks at all. When he ad first resurrection, Gotou had leaped to his feet but everyone seemed to ignore him. There was no one else camping to regain their lost health points, so Gotou seated himself and watched players run back and forth for a little bit before he remembered the trick of waving his hand over someone to call up their status bar and information.

No one else seemed to be freaking out, so Gotou wondered if they were simply player avatars, or if there were other people like him, actually inhabiting the player character that they had created. He could not find a chatbox in all the controls he flipped through — he did find his friends list, and saw that Masayoshi's profile (FLAMEN RED, his user name in romanized all caps because to his eternal indignation someone was already using the handle "Samurai Flamenco") was highlight and active. Others were, too — casual acquaintances, both in the real world and players that he and Masayoshi had grouped with to run instances.

What if Masayoshi wasn't similarly afflicted? Gotou's finger hovered over the call button on his friends list. What if it was just __him?__ He hesitated, and dropped his hand, bracing both of his hands on his knees. With his interaction ceased, the dashboard HUD faded out — although he had found a setting to keep status bars up so that he could identify people at a distance. This was, to put it mildly, freaking him out. He was in a computer game, what the _ _hell__ was he supposed to do now? Where was he going to __sleep?__

"Hey, templar," someone said, and after a moment Gotou realized that he was being addressed. He glanced up to see a girl wearing something entirely inappropriate for questing, light armor that covered her chest but not her midsection and a pleated leather skirt. She had bright pink hair worn in twin tails, and two over-sized daggers worn on her hips. "You're not in a group? We're looking for a tank."

"Uh," Gotou said, a little stunned to be addressed so directly. "Sorry, no."

"You sure? You're geared to run, aren't you?" She looked at him critically, and Gotou put up both his hands, palms out, in a supplication gesture.

"Sorry, I'm waiting for my friend to log in."

"Your loss, cutie." The pink-haired player — whose status bar labeled her as NIX — blew him a kiss and moved on, her walk cycle not looking quite right. After a moment she paused and gestured — and suddenly faded out, having warped or used another form of instant teleportation.

Geared, huh. Gotou looked down at his hands and clenched his fists again. He stood up after a moment, and stretched his arms above his head. It was difficult to sit on the concrete, and he had realized after first resurrecting that he had a shield strapped onto his back. The sword at his hip was more obvious, but it was old and the blade looked rusted and worn; notches running up and down the length of its edge. Gotou needed a new weapon, and while he remembered the stats being somewhat low on his character's sword there was nothing like a physical representation of how shitty his weapon was to inspire that need. His shield was nice, at least — pentagonal, broad at the top and tapering down to a point. It had wear on it, too, scratches and scuffs that dinged the resplendent metal, but it was nowhere near as bad as his sword.

Gotou shrugged his shield back on, buckling the sword at his side and then gesturing to open up the menu. Before he could hesitate and talk himself out of it again, he tapped the 'call' button beside Masayoshi's name. He had to know, for certain.

The connection rang — it was strangely loud, but no one around him seemed to notice it. Gotou walked himself idly past the obelisk, toward an alley between two buildings just in case. There were non-player characters who roamed on set paths all around this small walled-in fortress, but he really didn't care if an NPC gave him a funny look for talking to himself. After a few far-too-long moments where Gotou grew increasingly worried that Masayoshi simply wasn't going to pick up at all, the connection opened and tinny though it was, Gotou heard the relief in Masayoshi's voice. "Gotou-san? Is that you?"

The thought struck Gotou suddenly that he shouldn't be able to __hear__ Masayoshi at all, the call function just opened up a separate private chat. "Masayoshi, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Gotou-san, where are __you__? I'm still at the instance entrance, why didn't you re-spawn where everyone was bound at the kisk? Or did you head back already?"

"The instance?" Gotou did not remember that. It took him a moment to even remember what that __was__ , he'd been absorbing so much in the last hour or so. "Masayoshi, is anything … different?"

There was a long pause. Gotou's stomach plummeted. "Different, how…?" Masayoshi asked cautiously.

There was no easy way to say 'Well, I'm trapped in this fucking game, are you too?' so Gotou sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, other hand braced on his hip. "What happened at the instance?"

"I'm coming to you, hang on," Masayoshi said. "Where are you bound, at the citadel?"

Gotou looked up at the church-like structure that sat behind the resurrection obelisk — it wasn't a church, though; it was full of non-player characters handing out quests and rewards. He continued to crane his neck upward and looked at the glowing portal that hung suspended above the city like a Damocles' sword. "Yeah," he said. "The citadel in the fortress."

"Great, I'll be there in a second, don't go anywhere!"

"Right," Gotou said, and dropped his hand as the call disconnected, his stomach gone to ice.

* * *

Hazama Masayoshi put both of his hands on his knees and stared down at the plate armor gauntlets he was wearing. He was sitting alone by the kisk — the other members of the group they had partied with had already dispersed to collect their rewards for completing the instance. He glanced back at the portal behind him, swirling an ominous red-purple, pulsing and glowing. It was a strange color for a portal, they were traditionally green or blue, glowing and moving but not looking … __threatening,__ for lack of a better term, like this one did. He'd never heard of it, but the quest had come up in his tracker when he logged in, and it wasn't difficult for two tanks to find a group to tackle it.

He had found the treasure chest back in the corner of the instance; it looked the same as all the others they had run across. The difference was this time it was just he and Gotou, and when he had kicked it open it had exploded instead of bearing loot. The subsequent flash had knocked out half his health bar in one go, and Gotou had been low already so it KO'd him, kicking him from the instance. Masayoshi had continued on with the group, trying to ping Gotou the rest of the way but he had not responded at all.

Then they exited the instance, and Masayoshi realized that things were different.

 _ _Very__ different.

He stood in the swamp water, felt it seeping through the joints of the armor he wore, and stared at his hands in utter disbelief. He craned his neck to look at the sky — he could __smell__ the putrid swamp gas, hear the beasts who roamed the swamp and aggro'd on people trying to get through the area as they bellowed and brayed — he was really __in__ the game, and he had no __idea__ how that had happened.

 _ _Is anything … different?__

Hoo boy.

Masayoshi sat cross-legged as he looked at the map before him. It had appeared in front of his eyes, virtual — like he had pressed a button but without a keyboard. The kisk had been dropped on a stone pillar, half-sunk in the swamp and away from the aggro range of the creatures. He had watched them for a little while — and unlike when he was watching the game screen they did not seem to roam in a predictable pattern. They __did__ stay away from certain areas, though — and while some of the creatures stood away and watched him, none approached.

If Gotou was at the fortress citadel, he had a lot of map to traverse. There wasn't a flight pad near here — but he could also use a teleport scroll, although he only had three of those left and was uncertain how to get more since they were a quest bonus and not purchased directly from a vendor. He had so many questions now … did quests even __work__ the same? If he fought one of those creatures now, what happened? Was there a carcass? Blood? Did he _ _kill__ it? There was so much he did not understand at the moment, and it sounded like Gotou might well be in the same boat.

And most importantly, how to log back __out__ of the game. Masayoshi had a photo shoot on Monday for a charity that Ishihara-san would quite possibly kill him over, if he didn't show up.

Masayoshi stood up. He wore full armor, although he'd taken off the helmet because once he popped out of the instance and into this, his new reality, he couldn't see out of the visor clearly. The armor was weirdly light, for being plate metal — he moved quickly and softly. Masayoshi had chosen his class for speed and the ability to hit the bad guys himself, and had finally collected an armor set that reminded him a little of his last (and in his mind, greatest), of his Samurai Flamenco outfits. The armor itself wasn't red, but it had red accents, so he was satisfied. He picked up his halberd and secured it over his shoulder in a motion he didn't even have to think about and probably wasn't actually possible if he __did__ — and gestured to the air.

Selecting something out of his inventory made it appear, and when Masayoshi touched the cube holding the white scroll, it materialized in his hand. He looked at the scroll before he unfurled it, and read the quick incantation that activated it. As he finished the words, the scroll vanished, and the world around him seemed to fuzz out, and go black.

A moment later, Masayoshi appeared in the main square of the fortress citadel, arriving in front of the resurrection obelisk. Each main area had one — you could bind to a specific location, and then if you were to "die" you were transported back to that location to rest up under the watchful eye of a soul healer. As such, all transportation scrolls send you directly to the obelisk in the town that was named in the incantation, making it quite an expedient form of travel.

Masayoshi blinked a little in surprise — there had been absolutely nothing, no pain, no sensation, just the brief moment of black between being in the swamp and being here, in the busy fortress. It was a little unsettling, but here was here now — and Masayoshi craned his neck, looking up at the huge portal framed by rock floating in the sky above their heads. The scent of the swamp had followed him a bit, and Masayoshi waved his hand in front of his face to dispel the odor, not that it seemed anyone noticed.

The fortress citadel — Vertereon Fortress, the map had marked the location as — was a busy place. This was where the main quests and campaigns were handed out, where the broker and general goods market were, and where the flight transporter and teleportation pad were located. There were players and nonplayer characters everywhere he looked; groups bustling about, lone players running around completing quests and making exchanges, and characters that were frozen in idle motions as their players had stepped away from their keyboards. Masayoshi looked around and started moving through the crowd. There was a wide margin of customization for the player characters, so tiny ones would zip around past them, moving at top speed, and occasionally Masayoshi would find himself dwarfed by someone who maxed out the height and bulk stats.

He no longer had a character locater on his map — but he still found Gotou all the same, sitting in the resting position in an alley between two of the merchant shops on market row. "Gotou-san," Masayoshi called, and waved as he came up. Gotou stood up slowly and patted himself, a distinctly un-animated movement. He was shorter than Masayoshi here, almost a head difference in height, his armor heavier. Templars sacrificed speed for damage and HP. Masayoshi smiled despite himself, and Gotou sighed wearily. "I guess I really screwed something up this time, huh?"

* * *

Despite the somewhat constant crush of players in the fortress, there were plenty of areas to visit that didn't receive quite as much foot traffic. The inner wall of the fortress was occasionally patrolled by the non-player character guards, on the lookout for an invasion that would never come, since this was not a PVP zone. Masayoshi sat on the edge of the inner wall, his halberd laying on the ground behind him and his armored boots kicking off of the aged stone. Gotou stood.

"So this is really happening," Gotou said, his arms folded. He wasn't looking down at Masayoshi, instead out at the sprawl of buildings clustered inside the fortress walls. The area wasn't huge — the handful of buildings were arranged in a semi-circle inside the fortress, the citadel at the back, leaving a large open area for players to congregate in. "How in the __hell__ -?"

Masayoshi shrugged, leaning his weight back on his hands. He bounced the heel of his foot off the stone with a dull noise. "I don't know, Gotou-san. I haven't been in touch with the rest of the group we ran the instance with, but I think if this had become reality for anyone else, someone would have, I don't know, __said__ something by now, don't you think?"

Gotou grunted, and finally sat down next to Masayoshi, laying his sword on the ground behind him, like Masayoshi's polearm. "I don't know," Gotou said, looking down at the drop beneath their feet. It was considerable, but not fatal. "I've never been stuck in a __video game__ before, I don't exactly have a playbook."

"Yeah." Masayoshi said, his voice soft and considerate for a moment. Then he leaned back and pointed above their heads, at the movement above them, near the glowing white portal. He climbed to his feet without looking, and fortunately Gotou was watching Masayoshi and not whatever he was pointing at. Gotou scrambled to his feet in time to catch Masayoshi by the shoulder plate before he stepped right off the edge. " __Masayoshi!__ " Gotou yelled, yanking him back onto the walkway. Masayoshi's arms pinwheeled in surprise, and the force Gotou exhibited made Masayoshi fall back onto his ass, armor clattering loudly.

"Wh- __what-!?__ " Masayoshi yelped, clearly stunned. Gotou was a little stunned himself at how effortless his movement was. He opened and closed his hands, now at his sides, chest heaving. "Gotou-san, __what-__?"

"You were about to set off the edge, you idiot!" Gotou said loudly.

"Oh," Masayoshi said, eyes wide and hair wild. "Oh, __oh.__ " He sat up and crossed his legs, running a hand through his hair. "I would have been okay, Gotou-san, that sort of fall just knocks off a few HP, remember?"

Gotou's hand closed into a fist, he crossed his arms over his chest to hide the small tremor of his hand. "Just because it doesn't do a lot of damage doesn't mean it doesn't __hurt__ ," he said sharply.

Masayoshi blinked at him — and then his face broke into a wide, sunny smile. "Gotou-san," he said happily. Gotou looked away from him, down into the town, and Masayoshi thought that his ears had gone pink. Gotou's gaze drifted up, just like Masayoshi's had. "First order of business, then," Gotou said, watching the figures far above their head, guards on an air patrol circling slowly. "We need to contact everyone who was in the group at the instance, make sure that none of them have been dragged into the circle of weirdness that follows you like the plague."

Masayoshi nodded his head, his own arms folded as he absorbed what Gotou said. Then he lifted his head and looked at Gotou again. "I don't think they have been," he said. "We were the only two who took damage when the treasure box exploded."

There was a moment of silence while Gotou looked back at Masayoshi, a peculiar expression on his face. "The treasure box exploded?" he repeated, the fragments of what must have happened floating around now in his head. "That's got to be it, then. Something about __that__ triggered __this.__ We need to get back into that instance and see what we can find out."

"But, it's a daily instance," Masayoshi said. "Hey, __ow!__ "

Oblivious, an NPC guard had stepped on Masayoshi as he continued his circuitous patrol. Masayoshi rubbed the scuff on his armor and huffed in aggravation. "It's a daily instance," Masayoshi said again, glaring after the NPC. He didn't even have a name, except for FORTRESS GUARD. "We have to wait for it to reset."

Gotou nodded his head. He had expected worse, that it was a weekly instance or even a one-time event, stranding them forever — but a day, he could handle. Probably. "If you don't sit on their guard route, they won't step on you," he said as Masayoshi stood up again, picking up his weapon and slinging it over his shoulder in a clearly practiced move. "Where are you going?"

"I've got quests to turn in, don't you?" Masayoshi said with a loose shrug. "We've got a day before the instance resets, might as well knock off some of the things on our to-do list."

Gotou stared at him. "You're not thinking about __grinding__?"

Masayoshi stared right back at Gotou, and it was distinctly unsettling to have to glare __up__ at Masayoshi, but Gotou was getting the hang of it, jaw set. Then he realized that Masayoshi had turned a very faint pink hue. "Are you okay?"

"I'm __fine__ ," Masayoshi yelped, needlessly loud. "Never better, Gotou-san! Let's go turn in the quests!" That said, Masayoshi hopped right past Gotou and over the edge of the stone masonry. Gotou was not quick enough to catch him this time, but he heard the clatter as Masayoshi hit the ground out of sight. He leaned carefully over the edge and saw Masayoshi sitting on his butt, legs sprawled out in front of him, halberd off his back. Twenty percent of his HP was gone from the impact.

" _ _Ow__ ," Masayoshi whimpered.

Gotou took the stairs.

* * *

It was a little eerie, interacting with the non-player characters. They didn't seem to have anything regarding a mind of their own — standing in silence, or completing idle animations in a loop until interrupted by an adventurer who needed something. It didn't bother Gotou when he was clicking on them with a mouse, but now that he was standing in front of somebody, awaiting acknowledgment — it was downright __macabre.__

Masayoshi did not seem to have the same issue that he did. He strolled right up to the quest administrator and tapped the NPC on the shoulder, which brought him to life. "Arieluma," the administrator said brightly, and then did something off the script, which was look between Masayoshi and Gotou. The NPC blinked, and then looked at Gotou, as if he were suddenly at a loss as to what to do next. "I…"

"I have a few quests to turn in," Masayoshi said cheerfully. That seemed to put the administrator back on track, and he turned to Masayoshi. Gotou watched silently as the transaction took place. It was frankly hilarious to watch Masayoshi produce pelts out of thin air, being very surprised by their existence, and then handing them over to the administrator who laid them out on the table behind him.

The quest administrator — an acknowledge NPC — had been nonplussed by speaking to two people at once. He also kept stealing glances at Gotou, as if expecting … what? He had no idea. Gotou observed silently, until Masayoshi was done and tucking the acquired gold coins into the pouch that had appeared at his belt.

"Don't you have any completed quests?" Masayoshi asked Gotou, who shook his head negatively.

"I got kicked out of the instance, remember? I didn't get to finish any of them."

"What about the hunting quests just outside the citadel? The one with the potcrabs always gets a lot of EXP and stuff." Masayoshi shrugged loosely and indicated the administrator, who had not reverted to his idle animation.

"I don't think I finished that one either," Gotou said. He didn't tend to log in to this game without Masayoshi, so he didn't do a lot of solo quests. "Does it really matter? We're just killing time until we can get into the instance again."

"Of course it matters!" Masayoshi said insistently. "Don't you want to level-up, Gotou-san? Learn new skills?" He poked the simple armor that Gotou was wearing with one armor-clad finger himself. "Get better stats on your armor?"

" You are __way__ too into this," Gotou said, "for something that is absolutely not in any way __toku__ or __sentai__ related."

"Will … that be all?" The quest administrator looked between them. Masayoshi leaned forward and actually shook the man's hand enthusiastically, clasping his hand between Masayoshi's gauntlets gently.

"Thank you!" he said cheerfully. This nonplussed the NPC further. Gotou took Masayoshi by the arm and steered him away, casting a glance over his shoulder and watching for a moment as the man looked at his hand, and then looked at the wares all around him.

"Was that NPC acting weird to you?" Gotou asked.

Masayoshi looked down at Gotou and shook his head. "Not really, no. Are we gonna go work on quests?"

"Absolutely not," Gotou said.

* * *

Gotou stood on the sandy slope that led up to the fortress. There was a well-worn path that led under the raised portcullis, it twisted away down the slope and then reversed direction up into the cut-out side of the mountain, shadowed by the trees. Gotou swore he could hear the growls from the worgs that undoubtedly patrolled its shadowy depths.

Masayoshi stood next to him, hands planted on his hips. He looked __just__ like Masayoshi — neither of them had been entirely creative with their character designs. His hair was fluffier, wilder — and just a touch longer, enough so that he could make a tiny spiky ponytail out of it, if he so wanted.

"Crabs," Masayoshi intoned, and Gotou sighed.

"We're not grinding," he said. Getting killed was __not__ fun, he wasn't going to let that happen again, no matter how low a level the creatures were supposed to be in comparison. "Besides, what happens when we fight something? I don't want to get soaked in green crab blood or something."

"I don't … __think__ that will happen." Masayoshi said. He didn't sound the slightest bit certain. "Look, this area isn't aggro, right? Let's just sit down and see what happens when someone else emerges to fight something down here." Gotou had his sword in his hand so he put it point-down in the sand and dropped into a seated position behind it. Masayoshi glanced over at him and nodded, before sitting down next to him.

"This is so weird," Masayoshi said, his legs straight out in front of him.

"Glad to hear you at least acknowledge it," Gotou said. There were lots of potcrabs scuttling about — crabs bigger than a small dog, that came up to his knee or higher, with pincher claws that looked like they could amputate a limb in one go. There were other creatures too, roaming about, all various forms of sea fauna, but none that seemed to trigger any alerts. Gotou tapped the air in front of him, and brought up his command menu, one eye on his enemy radar. "That's strange," Gotou said, more absorbed in his friends list than anything else. "Almost everyone's online."

"Well," Masayoshi said, halberd in the sand at his right side, leaning back on his hands as he watched the landscape. "It is Saturday by now, right?"

"Some of them __work__ on Saturdays," Gotou reminded Masayoshi, scrolling through the list. He tapped the name of a coworker who had been playing the game for a while, his character at level cap. "Look, even Nick's online, and he said he doesn't play this game any more."

Masayoshi made a face, then gestured himself, clearly opening his own menu system. A few mid-air taps and he made the same puzzled noise. "Yeah," he said. "Even Pink's online. Last time we all grouped together she had signed off in a huff and said she wasn't playing again and the game was stupid. That's __weird.__ " He tapped the air, clearly on her name. "I can't call her."

Gotou tapped Nick's name. A red circle with a slash through it appeared over the 'call' button. "What the __hell__ ," Gotou said. He scrolled to Masayoshi's name and tapped it, and the same thing happened. "I can't call anyone. Not even you, and that worked earlier."

"I'm sitting right next to you, Gotou-san."

"That shouldn't make a difference." Gotou let his hand drop, the menu system fading out. "Just what is going __on__ here?"

"Uh-oh," Masayoshi said, his hand still in the air.

Gotou leaned back on his hands and sighed, even as Masayoshi leaped to his feet in a single, smooth motion, halberd in his hand. Gotou watched him with a furrowed brow, and then the enemy alert noise cropped up for him as well.

"What the __hell-?"__ Gotou said, on his feet and sword in hand.

"Giant crab," Masayoshi said, awfully calm. Gotou whirled and saw the thing bearing down on him, taller than he was and clearly capable of consuming him in two bites or less. Gotou's sword was in his hand, and he glanced over to Masayoshi to see if he was ready, but to his surprise Masayoshi was no longer right next to him. He had turned tail and run, heading up the path toward the fortress.

"Masayoshi, what the __fu-__ " he yelled as the giant crab raised one enormous pincher.

God __dammit__.

* * *

"I'm so sorry, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, standing in front of the resurrection obelisk and looking about as contrite as he could manage. Gotou sat on the ground, elbow on his knee and chin in his hand, thinking angry thoughts about seafood in general and crab in particular. "I had my radar up, that was a higher class of monster than we could take on at our current levels."

"So you left me as bait," Gotou said dryly.

"No!" Masayoshi protested. "I thought you would run, too!"

"I didn't know __what__ we were doing! I can't read your mind, Masayoshi!" Gotou sighed, both hands on his knees now. "Stop hanging your head like I kicked your dog. I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Yeah, but you __died.__ " Masayoshi's face had shifted straight over to heartbroken. Gotou stood up slowly, his health bar was only about a third of the way full now, but he could at least move around, and this made Masayoshi lean forward and hug him. "Don't die again, Gotou-san!"

He patted Masayoshi awkwardly. "Let me go."

"No! I'm supposed to protect you! I failed!"

A couple of players had looped the courtyard and come around again, slowing down to watch the display curiously. Gotou sighed and put one hand on Masayoshi's chest, shoving him away as gently as he could manage. "You're not supposed to be protecting me here, I'm the __tank__ , 'yoshi. It's okay, just don't … run off and not let me know what's going on, okay?"

Masayoshi nodded his head, his eyes wide and watery.

"So, how long until the instance resets?" Gotou asked, leaning against the parapet, looking out over the sandy, pastel beach full of potcrabs and other various sea creatures. Masayoshi was sitting with his back to the wall, legs thrown out straight in front of him and hands in the air as he was navigating about his menus, going through his inventory.

"About twenty hours or so, Gotou-san," Masayoshi's fingers hesitated in mid-air — the friends function not only allowed you to chat and call other people in the game, but it was supposed to tell you where they were in the area maps. Most of the people logged in were in different zones, but… "Gotou-san?"

Gotou made a noise of affirmation, wordless. Masayoshi glanced up at him, certain he was still mad about the giant crab Whenever he grouped with people, the reaction to the giant crab was everyone getting the hell out because until you were a higher level than it, it was usually a one-hit kill. He had expected Gotou to bolt, and had turned around halfway up the sandy bank in time to see Pakisgue raise its claw and clobber Gotou.

Masayoshi had seen Gotou die in game before but it was different now. Watching it happen, the color fading out of Gotou like he'd been in the wash too many times, falling flat - that was different from what happened __before__ , when he was just watching it on a screen; when a player's character would fall into a crouch, wings shrouded over them to show that they were inactive, waiting for another player to resurrect them or choosing to teleport back to the obelisk where they were bound. Gotou just fell, just like that — and then he was gone, and Masayoshi had tripped twice, banging his shoulder off the stone column at the entrance of the fortress trying to get to the resurrection obelisk. He found Gotou sitting there with a sour look on his face. His relief was palpable.

"Oi," Gotou said, breaking Masayoshi's reverie. "Did you have a question, or do you just like saying my name?"

"Your name is nice," Masayoshi said absently, his attention returning to the screens before him. "I show that, well—" The person's status information had changed while he was daydreaming. "Green __was__ in our zone for a bit, but he's gone now. We could always go to the capital, the main city base and see if anyone turns up there."

"The one floating above? Way, way above?" Gotou shook his head sharply. "I don't think so."

"Why not? It's perfectly safe." Masayoshi let his hand drop.

"Let's just stick around here until the instance resets," Gotou said finally, hands resting on the colored sandstone. He winced a little, and Masayoshi head the yells of consternation. Facing into the fortress the way he was Masayoshi could see several people pop into existence arranged around the resurrection obelisk. "Pakisgue got them?"

"Fucking __crabs__ ," Gotou muttered, mostly under his breath. He turned and slid into a seated position beside Masayoshi. "So, what do you want to do to kill twenty hours?"

"What quests do you have?" Masayoshi asked him, thinking of how much they could get done in that amount of time, uninterrupted.

"I could have sworn I said, no grinding."

Masayoshi pursed his lips. "So are you going to just sneak around all the monsters when we enter the instance, Gotou-san?"

Gotou opened his mouth to respond, then snapped it shut, glaring not at Masayoshi but out at the fortress. "That's dirty pool, 'yoshi."

"We could always go to the Holy Shrine and hang out there. It's really pretty there, I bet it would be amazing now, to see it."

"The one with the wind spirits?" Gotou nodded to himself as he thought.

Masayoshi leaned forward excitedly. "Yes!" He gestured broadly and brought up the map. "It's on the other side of this zone, but because the map is a loop it's just a little to the south of us. We can fly over the mountain." As he spoke someone opted to do just that, the giant green transportation bird flapping out from the teleportation kiosk near the fortress gate. They both watched the translucent creature flap into the sky and out of sight.

" I am __not__ getting on one of those things," Gotou said and Masayoshi laughed, then realized Gotou was serious.

"Why not?" The birds were not uncommon, but there wasn't a lot of traffic at the moment. Gotou tilted back and looked at the portal above the city, and the small figures flying around it.

"Just seems like a bad idea, is all."

"They're perfectly safe." Masayoshi sat forward. "People use them __constantly.__ "

Gotou lifted his finger in the air. "Yes, but those are player-characters. Not us. What if the rules are different, for us?"

"You resurrected at the obelisk," Masayoshi said stubbornly. "We're just __here__ , the rules are the same."

"I'll walk," Gotou said, standing upright. "We've got time to kill, anyway." He stretched his arms above his head, and then rubbed a hand through his hair and looked over at Masayoshi, who had crossed his arms and settled back against the wall, a frown on his face.

"You'd __rather__ go through the worg-infested forest," Masayoshi said in disbelief.

"The other direction is faster, right?" Gotou looked toward the other path, that led along the water and disappeared around a stone outcropping.

"That … that takes us through the __outpost__ ," Masayoshi said. "Tursins. Big ugly red guys with an attitude problem, remember?" He tapped his fingers on the shaft of his halberd as he thought. "If we go the long way 'round we would have to go through the Dukaki mining camp __and__ the contaminated swamp," he reminded Gotou. "Are you _ _sure__ you don't want to fly?"

Gotou looked back at the path, the down to Masayoshi. "Tursins? You're scared of __Tursins?__ "

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said patiently. "It's a group party area. They're made to be difficult to…" he hesitated a moment, the danced around the word. "…defeat." They'd been watching others grind potcrabs for a while, and the creatures definitely respawned, so it should be no more different for sentient enemies. At least, he kept telling himself that.

"I don't feel like dealing with the contaminated swamp," Gotou said. "I bet it smells like ass. Let's go through the outpost, it shouldn't be too bad, from what I remember."

* * *

Gotou knocked his head back against the resurrection obelisk, eyes closed. "Those fuckers are __much__ bigger than I remember," he said to no one in particular, as his status bar slowly filled. Masayoshi's voice was a little tinny, like he was speaking into a can.

"I'm so sorry, Gotou-san! I should have protected you better!"

Gotou could still see the three huge, red-skinned monsters coming at him. "Don't worry about it, Masayoshi," he said. "Where are you? Did they get you?"

"No, I'm still hiding." Masayoshi's tone got hushed, conspiratorial. "I'm up on a rock. I don't think they look up."

Gotou wet his lips. "Are you going to be able to get back here? We'll go the long way 'round." Gotou stood up slowly and stretched, and looked for a moment at his piteously depleted experience bar. He glanced to the soul healer and thought about it. "Teleport, if you have to."

"Oh!" Masayoshi said. "I forgot, I'm not bound at the citadel, Gotou-san."

He sighed as he exchanged gold for his held-hostage experience points. "Where are you bound, then?"

"The holy shrine! I can meet you there, just go ahead and fly."

Gotou looked up sharply, but realized that the soul healer was __staring__ at him. It was uncomfortable, and it wasn't a stare in the same way that the non-player characters would stare right through you, he was definitely looking __at__ Gotou. Gotou stepped away and tried to let that roll off his back. The quest administrator, now the soul healer? As if this game wasn't strange enough.

"I'll __walk__ ," Gotou said.

"Gotou- __saaaaan__ ," Masayoshi said, dragging out his name, whining like a child. "Please, __please__ don't leave me alone here? It'll only take a few minutes, __please__."

"If you're so hell-bent on it, why don't you fly here and we'll go the long way 'round together." Gotou glanced around the square, then thought to check his inventory. As he was looking over his potions and scrolls, his stomach rumbled. After everything else that had happened, he had completely forgotten about the basic necessities. He sighed again, this time to himself. "I'll see you when I get there," Gotou said, and closed the call-tab. He had been surprised that it worked for them now, but then again Masayoshi was no longer in shouting distance. Still though, if he tried to call anyone else on his friends list it buzzed, but refused to connect.

The food seller was actually located inside a building. Gotou remembered it looking just like every other merchant in the game, a NPC behind a table, some wares out, you talk to them, exchange pleasantries, buy sustenance. When he stepped through the heavy wooden door, though, Gotou was greeted by some fantastic smelling food.

The interior looked like an actual tavern, with several long wooden tables and benches that a handful of adventurers sat at, eating food from bowls with spoons and forks. Gotou hesitated but then decided that he was hungry and Masayoshi could wait, so he ordered something that had 'porgus' in it, and took his bowl to the table to eat the stew. Masayoshi would be __fine__ , and besides if he was bound at the Holy Shrine, then that meant if he did something stupid and got himself killed, he should respawn there, no problems.

 _ _But…__ that annoying little voice said in the back of his mind. __What if he doesn't respawn?__

Gotou waved the voice away with irritation, and tucked into his meal.

* * *

Masayoshi sat on the edge of the platform, behind the transportation pad. His feet dangled off the white marble, situated in the bough of an enormous tree. The branch that spread meters beneath his feet was wide enough to drive a truck along, its leaves he could sit comfortably on. There were several non-player characters who sat at idle along the platform, and a few players who would come and go, as well as the large green bird who acted as transportation which left and arrived with some frequency.

This had been the closest binding point to the instance — outside of the kisk that the group had dropped, but that was just a temporary marker and binding spot, and its usage time had expired already. While the instance was technically in another zone, there were __ways__ to get there faster from here than there were from the closest resurrection obelisk in the other zone. Masayoshi had thought to bind here days earlier — this zone was a little below his current level but there were some coin quests and he had been eying a new set of armor.

He kicked his legs and leaned back on his hands. The sunlight's quality was different here — it filtered through the large canopy of green leaves, scattering across the air. At least there __was__ sunlight up here — closer to the ground it was darker, dimmer, and a lot of the light actually came from the effervescent glow of the wind spirits and the glowworms that patrolled the forest floor.

A quick breeze sprang up as a player left the Shrine, the green transportation bird soaring up above Masayoshi's head.

There were so many little things. The breeze, the smell of sunlight and leaves, moss and loam … Masayoshi looked back over his shoulder. He was alone on the platform now, save for the non-player characters, which all were in their idle animation cycles … except for the one he had spoken with, to exchange wind crystals from slain wind spirits for coins. That NPC's cycle had changed, if he was even in a cycle now. He tidied his wares, looked around, sat down, stood up again. Masayoshi rose to his feet. He was bored, waiting for Gotou.

The platform in the tree extended back to a large covered area supported by columns but open along all sides. Masayoshi had ignored this area in the past as there were no NPCs with dialog stashed away back there, just a pair of unnamed guards who patrolled the circumference of the building in a slow, lumbering pace.

Masayoshi moved quicker than the guards, even at a walking pace and not the swift jog/run he usually used to move around areas. He looped the building once; then again, this time stopping at the furthermost point from the obelisk and transportation pad areas. It was a different view from over here, he realized as he stepped up on the ledge, one hand on the pillar for balance.

The foliage was thicker here, the tree branches no less so. Between the, though, he could see the glow of the distant portal that led to the swamp, where the instance was tucked away — the portal as big as a city building, it did not glow so much as waver in the air, showing the swamp to those who got close enough to investigate it.

A tree branch did extend out just about a meter or so down from where he stood. Masayoshi considered it for a moment, then dexterously hopped off the ledge and onto the tree branch. In the past, if he had tried to stray from the platform is was like his player character ran into an invisible brick wall; but such constraints seemed to be lifted now that he was really present in the moment. All the same, Masayoshi moved slowly, one hand out in front of him lest he run smack into an unseen obstacle. The last thing he wanted was to get knocked off the branch.

Fortunately, no such obstacle appeared. Masayoshi walked to the end of the branch — or, at least where it started to taper off and sway with his every footstep. Here the sunlight was stronger, as there was a bare patch in the huge holy tree that allowed it to trickle through. From this angle he couldn't see the strange monolith in the sky, and for a moment, looking up through leaves big enough to serve as blankets he could almost pretend it was a regular mid-afternoon sky, and a regular tree. Masayoshi shaded his eyes and smiled. Gotou would like this view, he thought.

He had been bothering Gotou on and off for weeks to join this game. Masayoshi thought it was a great way to get his mind off … __things__. Gotou had been doing better, recently — he didn't seem to slip into a melancholy quite as often, although Masayoshi would still sometimes come home to find him curled up on the bed, all the lights off and a darkened cell phone clutched in his hand. What better way to try to help than to play a cooperative game together? Masayoshi nodded to himself, arms crossed as he stood on the tree branch. It had been Master's idea, to do something __together__ , have him focus on something else! It was as good an idea as any, especially coming from Master.

Well, but now they were both trapped in the game and there was weirdness afoot, and Masayoshi could almost guarantee that Gotou was going to burn his laptop (or at least uninstall the game and system restore the computer) whenever they finally managed to escape back into the __real__ world. Masayoshi let out a breath, turned on his heel and raised one hand to call his menu screen when he looked back up at the Shrine and froze.

Sitting atop the blemished white marble building, lazing over the side and watching him as intently as a cat eying its dinner was a gargoyle.

It had not triggered his enemy alert yet. It was just watching him, aware — which meant that he was at the very edge of its aggro range. The gargoyle was huge; four legs and a thick torso, a long tail with wicked-looking sharp fins, and huge wings that looked ratty and tattered. Its head was broad and flat, and it had twin curved horns above its brow. Masayoshi had his halberd in his hand before he even thought about it, the motion to arm himself in-game overriding his conscious thought.

"Nice gargoyle," Masayoshi said out loud. "I don't want to fight." He edged a foot closer to the platform, and the gargoyle lashed its long tail, draped over the edge of the building. "I just want to get back into the Shrine." One more step forward. Masayoshi exhaled the breath he was holding … he might be able to run and make it underneath the gargoyle and into the shrine properly, but what would that __mean__? Would it forget about him, or, would it continue to attack, thereby putting the NPCs — not to mention any other players who had arrived — in danger? But, fighting it out here, on the branch… Masayoshi flexed his body, which made the entire limb bounce slightly. Yeah, that wasn't going to work either.

The gargoyle shifted again and rose up on its four feet, extending its wings. They were tattered, with holes in the thin skin that sunlight could be seen through. It shook its entire frame once and the enemy alert sounded just as it roared. "Ah," Masayoshi said, gripping his weapon tight in both hands. There was only really one other option, and that was to take the fight to it. But he hadn't tried out __that__ particular option since he arrived, because he wasn't quite certain how well it was going to work, but … at this point, his hand was forced.

"Here goes," Masayoshi breathed, bracing himself.

* * *

Gotou stood in front of the transportation pad in the fortress. It was a busy place, and the players who took the in-game flight (clutched in the talons of a fucking __huge__ translucent green bird, what, you couldn't even ride on __top__ of it like a civilized human being…) did not seem to notice Gotou's hesitation. It wasn't that he was afraid to __fly__ , per se … but the thought of making the trip clutched in some ridiculous giant bird's claws, a mere hairs-breath from being dropped … __that__ was what he was afraid of.

The other option, of course, was to take the long way 'round; but as Masayoshi was already on the other side of the map Gotou did not want to make that journey solo. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself before he spoke with the flight transporter, and just as he stepped forward to speak with her a teleportation portal opened practically on top of him, and he was almost flattened by a player leaping through.

"That's it," Gotou said to himself, side-stepping the oblivious female player character and marching up to the flight transporter. The NPC had a name above her head — Mirdiena — and she cocked her head and looked at Gotou curiously.

"Where do you wish to go today?" she asked, tone polite but expression not quite matching it.

"Ardus Shrine," Gotou said automatically. When there wasn't a response from Mirdiena he hesitated, his hand at his hip for the gold exchange.

"Ardus," she repeated slowly, as if she hadn't said the words before. "Shrine."

"Yes, the Holy Shrine," he said. "How much gold for-?"

"Oh yes," she shook her head and gestured, giving him the total. Gotou exchanged the gold, and she hesitated again, then nodded her head. "Safe journeys."

"Yeah," Gotou said as he stepped on the transportation pad and closed his eyes. "I hope so."


	2. Chapter 2

__That wasn't so bad,__ Gotou thought as he stood woozily on the transportation pad in the Holy Shrine at Ardus. If you took out the disorientation, the fact that he was watching the landscape rush by underneath him with absolutely zero protection, or the fact that the bird was apparently a gigantic asshole and enjoyed going out of its way to try and elicit a reaction from its passenger the whole thing was actually quite an efficient way to get around. All the same, he was not doing that again unless he absolutely __had__ to.

Ardus Shrine — __the__ Holy Shrine of Verteron according to the in-game map — was settled in the bough of an enormous tree. Gotou stepped off the transportation pad and looked around. It wasn't like Masayoshi had a whole lot of places to __go__ , up here. Most of the NPCs that lined the platform were in their idle animations, but one of them was watching all around him, and was paying attention to something deeper in the shrine — or, more accurately, _ _above__ it. Gotou's eyes followed his line of sight, and saw a flash of red energy. Someone was on top of the Shrine _ _, fighting.__

 _ _Someone.__

"Masayoshi!" Gotou said, trying to get him on the voice chat. There was no response, and Gotou could only assume he was too close for that function to work properly. He moved quickly to the end of the platform, trying to get a good look at what was happening above the Shrine. If the figure __was__ Masayoshi, he couldn't quite tell because there were three enormous grey beasts besieging it, their wings and huge whip-like tails thrashing, All he could see was the occasional flash of a weapon. Gotou had no idea how to get up there to even help, but he was already moving toward the deeper part of the Shrine, eying the roof, trying to gauge how to climb it. There was an even brighter flash and the clamor of weapon against monster stopped abruptly.

Gotou hesitated, and then spun on his heel to look at the resurrection obelisk that stood near the transportation pad. After a moment, Masayoshi appeared, his hands on his knees and breathing hard. He looked faint and translucent for a few moments, and when his form solidified he sat down in front of the obelisk and leaned back on his hands, eyes closed.

 _ _He's fine,__ Gotou thought, trying to fight down the nausea that bubbled up in his throat at the realization that he had arrived just a little too late to prevent this. __He's fine. We're in a game. I've respawned three times in the last few hours, it's fine.__

Masayoshi opened his eyes and saw Gotou standing there, looking lost. His expression instantly brightened, but he didn't stand up just yet, his health bar too low. "Gotou-san!" he said cheerfully, as if Gotou had not just witnessed him getting ripped apart by some manner of beast. "You made it! Did you fly?"

Gotou's mouth was dry, but he forced his tone back into casual by sheer force of will. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine." Masayoshi folded his legs in front of him and put his gauntlets atop them, cocking his head and blinking innocently up at Gotou. "Don't go into the big part of the shrine, those gargoyles are __super__ aggro and really hard to kill."

He nodded automatically and then remembered what he had in his inventory. "I brought you food," he said, and Masayoshi brightened further.

"Food? Really, what sort?"

"Some kind of stew thing." Gotou gestured and dug into his inventory. The stew appeared in a bowl with a spoon in his hands, still warm and steaming. "This is completely insane," he said conversationally as he handed it off to Masayoshi, who raised the bowl to his nose and inhaled.

"Insane or not, it smells wonderful. What's in it?" Masayoshi raised the spoon and tucked in, then paused. "This tastes … weird, Gotou-san."

"It's not just me, then," Gotou rested his arm on the hilt of his sword as he watched Masayoshi. "Good, I thought it tasted a little strange."

"It doesn't taste like stew. It's like…" Masayoshi took another bite, nose wrinkled in concentration. It was a strangely endearing expression, and Gotou should not be having a thought like __that__ right now. "I don't know. It tastes, but I don't know __what__ it tastes like." Another bite. "Not bad, though."

"Yeah." Gotou said. He heard a creature make noise, and he glanced up to the main portion of the Shrine, where a large grey gargoyle sat now over the entrance, watching them both with hungry eyes. Gotou did not like that look, but when he pulled up the map he saw that they weren't in the creatures aggro range. He hoped that was just its usual place to idle, because if that thing had developed a taste for Masayoshi….

Masayoshi __must__ have been hungry, because he scraped the bowl and licked the spoon, odd-tasting stew or otherwise. "That was … filling," he said. When he stood up his health bar was completely full. "What do I do with the — oh!" The bowl and spoon vanished from his hands. "That's awfully convenient. I hope they went back to where they were supposed to."

Gotou glanced through his inventory. "So, we're at the Shrine. Now what? Instance still hasn't reset."

"There are coin quests here," Masayoshi said, nodding to himself. Coin quests were something that didn't grant experience points in and of themselves to players, but instead bestowed coins meant to exchange for special goods, only available from a single merchant. "They have some nice armor here! We can fight wind and air spirits for a while, it can't hurt to level a bit." He patted the obelisk behind him. "You should bind here, Gotou-san, just in case."

Masayoshi's entire attitude was making him a little bit nervous. While this might still be a game, they were actually _ _in__ here, and Masayoshi seemed pretty cavalier about it. "Maybe we should just take it easy," Gotou suggested gently, and Masayoshi pointed above and behind Gotou. He turned and glanced to the gargoyles that lounged on the roof of the Shrine.

"I __was__ taking it easy, and they kicked my butt," he said. "I want to __train__ , Gotou-san. Aren't you going to help me? We can't take on the ultimate evil with our stats the way they are now! We've got to get stronger!"

"Whoa, __ultimate evil__?" Gotou followed Masayoshi to the end of the platform. "First I've heard anything about __that__ , this is an MMO, there isn't an end boss, Masayoshi—" He stopped near the edge of the platform. Masayoshi had walked all the way to the edge and was staring down at the considerable drop with very little worry.

"We've got to __train__ , and get stronger!" Masayoshi pointed down. Gotou, after a moment's hesitation, came closer to the edge and glanced down. There, far below on the forest floor were white creatures that moved on all fours, vaguely lupine in shape. "Wind and air spirits," Masayoshi said excitedly.

Gotou gave a resigned sigh. "Okay," he said. No matter what, Masayoshi was going to go fight these things, and Gotou was not going to just sit on the sidelines and watch him get slaughtered. "Fine. Wind and air spirits. Now, how do we get do-"

Mid-sentence, mid- _ _word__ , Masayoshi grabbed his arm and stepped off the platform.

* * *

Gotou sat in front of the resurrection obelisk, arms crossed and __glaring__ up at Masayoshi, as if the force behind his glare could knock a few health points from Masayoshi's bar alone. Masayoshi's sabatons scraped the stone of the platform, but the asshole didn't look the slightest __bit__ repentant this time. His wingspan did shade the platform, the feathers arranged in a gradient from pure white to rosy-tipped. "Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, his eyes wide. "That looked like it __hurt!__ Did you forget that we can fly?"

" _ _Yes!"__

* * *

Safely on the forest floor now, Gotou rubbed the back of his head and then his shoulder. It was a weird feeling, _ _really__ weird, and it messed with his balance and equilibrium but he had managed to not die the second time, unfurling wings that yes, he had __completely__ forgotten that he had and were used in the game.

Who could blame him, he was having a busy day.

"Four times," Gotou said as Masayoshi gestured into the air, going through his quests and gearing up properly. "That is four times in however long it's been in-game time. No more."

Masayoshi stopped his gesture and looked up, over at Gotou — which, since he couldn't see the screen Masayoshi was viewing the action looked strangely comical. "Four times for what, Gotou-san?"

"That I've had to pay the fucking soul healer, Masayoshi!"

Masayoshi furrowed his brow and concentrated. "You just fell … the Tursin chief and Paksigue. That's only three. Are you feeling okay?"

"A worg got me before we met up," Gotou snapped, folding his arms. "That's four."

Masayoshi chewed on his lower lip, then put his attention back on his screens. "You should really be more careful, Gotou-san."

Gotou's mouth opened. He didn't have a retort in mind, but whatever was going to come out of his mouth was overridden by the enemy alert tone. "Are you fucking __serious__ ," Gotou said, as Masayoshi's head came up, scanning around alertly.

It was a wind spirit that had spotted them, its fur presented in large white spikes that glimmered in the dim light of the sanctuary's forest floor. The spikes were extended and glowing slightly blue as it charged an energy attack that would envelope both of them. Gotou got his shield on his arm and up just in time as that first attack came, an effect attack that would have dazed him if he hadn't blocked in time. Masayoshi, it seemed, wasn't so lucky, rooted in spot with a blank expression on his face.

Gotou gestured and brought up his attacks menu, but he was struck while trying to select a skill. He shook off the blow as the wind spirit charged them, and the effect attack wore off Masayoshi in the same instant. "Don't use your menu," Masayoshi yelled, and swung his halberd around, off his back and into both hands. He charged past Gotou, zeroing in on the wind spirit. "Just __hit__ it!"

"What?" Gotou said. Masayoshi's attack struck the ground in front of the wind spirit, not the creature directly. The force of the blow was strong enough to knock Gotou off his feet, and as he scrambled back upright the wind spirit was trying to regain its feet as well. Masayoshi had already moved on to another string of attacks. __A chain,__ Gotou realized. Before he could move again the wind spirit bellowed, and then vanished completely as if it had never been. Gold and items clattered to the forest floor in its wake, in front of Masayoshi.

"How did you…" Gotou asked, sheathing his sword, a little dazed by the encounter. "That was __quick.__ "

"They're not a super high level," Masayoshi said. "But I got some experience points, how about you?"

Gotou checked his status bar. "A little. What did you mean, 'don't use the menu'? How do you use your skills?"

Masayoshi held up a small vial with a blue liquid in it. "Want the mana potion? I don't use magic as much as templars do."

"Masayoshi!"

"I just hit it, and it's like I know what to do." He shrugged and straightened. "You used a block skill with a counterattack before you even __opened__ your menu, just like that."

"Oh," Gotou said, and Masayoshi handed him the flask with the shimmering blue liquid. "I guess I need to practice that, then." It had seemed a little natural, the way the moves flowed … but he had been so concentrated on pulling up his skills menu that he had missed the ease of the action.

Masayoshi grinned and nodded his head, indicating the sanctuary's forest floor around them. "Training," he proclaimed. Gotou sighed and smiled a little at Masayoshi's enthusiasm despite himself.

"Training," he agreed.

* * *

The rain made a soft pattering sound on the broad leaves that shadowed their heads. Gotou sat in the soft loam, his back to a tree branch big enough to be the trunk of a regular-sized tree. It was probably just a twig, in comparison to the massive size of the tree in the center of the sanctuary, Gotou thought idly, as he watched the rain.

Masayoshi was sitting on the branch itself, fingers busy in the air as he worked on … something. Gotou was not entirely sure what he was doing, they were taking a much-deserved break after grinding so many wind and air spirits he had lost count. They had their timing worked out better now, it was more cooperative than not; and Gotou couldn't help but feel that he and Masayoshi were just naturally in sync. It worked well, they had carved a path through the beasts so quickly that the ones they had started on were just now starting to reappear, spawning in their original locations.

Gotou watched a glowing worm float by along the path, undulating softly in mid-air. Those were hostile too, but the worm was well out of range, and from this distance it was simply pretty. Gotou looked over at Masayoshi, his armor bright and polished. It didn't look like he'd been through __that__ many battles, there wasn't a ding, dent, or imperfection across its shiny surface. The armor did make him bulkier than he usually was, and Gotou wondered idly if underneath it he was built the same as Masayoshi __really__ was.

"Gotou-san!" Masayoshi said, startling Gotou out of his reverie. He wasn't looking at Gotou, but all the same Gotou looked away, blushing furiously at having been caught staring. "My chat is working again!"

Gotou blinked and looked back at Masayoshi. "What, __really?__ " He gestured himself, bringing up his display.

The list of people was the same as before — Gotou didn't really have many friends in-game. He ran his finger down the list and tapped a bolded name, and just like that a chat dialog box appeared. "I'll be damned," he said. "I wonder if it was server maintenance?"

"No idea." Masayoshi's hands were moving quickly. "I'm talking to Green, he wants us to meet him and Black over in Heiron." Masayoshi glanced over at Gotou, waiting.

"What do you think?" Gotou asked honestly, flexing his hands. "Is it a safe area?"

"There's a minuscule chance of PVP in that area, but…" Masayoshi shrugged. "It's not above our levels."

Gotou nodded his head, then shook it once. "I mean, what do you think about them wanting to __meet__ , instead of discussing what's going on through the chat?" Gotou watched as two players entered the sanctuary, running down the path in the distance. One diverted off straight toward a wind spirit, the other coming back around to help. "Doesn't that strike you as a little odd?"

Masayoshi nodded his head, he was watching the two players as well. Once the wind spirit was defeated, they both grew their wings and flew up, toward the Shrine itself. "There's a lot odd about what's going on, though," he offered, and Gotou couldn't argue with that.

* * *

The portal between the two zones was tucked off into a corner of the sanctuary. They'd had to kill a few more spirits that had targeted them, but their aggro range had grown smaller with the more experience points the two of them had accumulated. Eventually they would level out of range and they could waltz right past without triggering an enemy alert. Gotou hoped that time would be sooner, rather than later.

Masayoshi stared up at the giant portal, shimmering and translucent, with spiral of green energy snaking through. "Here's to hoping we can even get out of this zone," Gotou said, and without waiting for Masayoshi to make a decision, he walked headfirst into the portal. After a moment, he emerged on the other side, glancing behind him and waiting for Masayoshi to join him. Masayoshi didn't hesitate, and followed right through; the teleportation here was instantaneous. He didn't break stride until he stopped next to Gotou, who had his hands out and was accessing his menu. "Looking for quests?" Masayoshi asked, looking at the darker colored sky, an ominous purple color, the ground and foliage not nearly as vibrant green and alive.

"Trying to log out," Gotou said. He shrugged and dropped his hands. "Was worth a shot. Where are we going?" He had a though, and gestured - after a moment there was a soft ding, and Masayoshi blinked.

"What did you do?"

"We're not a party," Gotou said. "This makes it easier, right? It's kinda silly since we're right __next__ to each other, but-"

Masayoshi clapped his hands together softly. "I didn't even think of that, Gotou-san, that's great! We're a group." He smiled broadly, and Gotou felt a little strange at his joy over such a simple action. Now Masayoshi gestured, and brought up a map that Gotou could now see. "We're headed to Airon desert," he said, pointing to the left of the map, an area full of wastes. "But first, we gotta get through this bog." Masayoshi wrinkled his nose at the prospect as he looked around — this was where the instance was, they had teleported directly to it when they'd decided to run it together. It was tucked away back in a corner, where the swamp was more swamp than not … here, the path was packed hard, and the ground wasn't super marshy.

"Fun times," Gotou said, and Masayoshi nodded. "We can just follow the path, though, that should keep us out of trouble."

"Yeah," Masayoshi said. " _ _Should.__ "

The path stretched in front of them — to either side of the little natural grotto that the portal sat in two Elysean guards in armor stood idly by. "Safe journeys," one commented as they passed. Gotou glanced back at the NPC, but he was just staring straight ahead, as if he hadn't broken character. "Did that guard just address us without being activated?" Gotou asked when they were out of earshot.

"I didn't hear it," Masayoshi said with a shrug. He looked back at Gotou, and caught him glancing back the way they had come.

The swamp stretched off to the east, their hard-packed path mostly clear of enemies. As they got deeper in, bipedal furry red-horned monsters started turning up off the path on either side, toiling in small circles, doing whatever it was that monsters did. Masayoshi hadn't really fought these yet, he had stayed mostly out of Heiron, waiting for Gotou to catch up to his level. He waved one hand over a particularly large specimen as they passed, and its name was written in gold above its head. Not entirely too high a level for them to fight … but not easy, like the wind spirits.

"Lovely place," Gotou muttered, one gauntleted hand cupped over his nose. "Smells like the inside of my sock drawer."

Masayoshi frowned. "Your sock drawer smells like dryer sheets, Gotou-san."

Gotou did not lower his hand, but he did look side-long at Masayoshi. "Smelling my socks much, then, Masayoshi?"

"I put them away! You left this huge pile on the bed, where else was I meant to sit?"

"You shouldn't be sitting on my __bed__ , that's weird." Gotou lowered his hand finally, glancing off, out over the swamps instead of looking at Masayoshi.

"It's the only piece of furniture to sit __on__ ," Masayoshi said reasonably "Sometimes I even take naps on it!" He frowned at Gotou, whose attention was fixed out in the distance. "Gotou-san, are you turning red? Is it heatstroke? I know the armor is heavy, but it's not that warm here…"

"I'M __FINE,__ " Gotou said in a loud tone of voice that told him that nothing was fine but Gotou did not want to speak further on the issue. Masayoshi hesitated, revisited what he said, and tried to figure out what had upset Gotou so. "If you don't want me to sleep on your bed-" he started to say, but Gotou abruptly did a heel-turn on the path and walked straight for one of the red-furred kerubs. "Gotou-san!"

The beast lifted its head and saw Gotou approaching. That triggered its aggro range, and it tucked its head down and charged with a bellow, horns pointed at Gotou's midsection. Gotou put his shield out as protection, flanking his midsection and his sword in one hand. Masayoshi went for his halberd, and without even looking over Gotou shook his head violently, a motion that was almost lost in the clash of energy as the kerub struck him. It took a good minute or so for the kerub to fall, but Gotou eventually killed it, and the creature faded out of existence, leaving a small pile of gold and items in its wake. Gotou scooped the items up, looked around at the other kerubs who had watched the battle but were not in range to trigger their own aggro, and then scooted back to the path. "What was __that__ all about?" Masayoshi said as Gotou deposited his loot.

"Close to leveling," Gotou said without looking at Masayoshi. "If you had helped, it would have shared the experience points between us. Also, your one sweeping blow that you like would have triggered every fucking one of them and we would have been swarmed."

That was a fair enough point. Masayoshi slung his halberd back over his shoulder again. "How close are you to leveling, then?" Masayoshi asked as they started along the path again.

"Close," Gotou said, still not looking at him. "I'm close."

The swamp started to firm up, although the washed-out, sick coloration of the landscape took longer to transition. As they came to a fork in the path, a very large tree (although nowhere near in the range of the trees in the forest Shrine) picked up its roots as one might pick up a skirt, and shuffled a few steps in another direction, startling both of them. They froze, neither having heard an enemy alert, and after a moment Gotou pointed high into the sky, above the tree's leaves where a blue quest indicator flashed. "Elim," Masayoshi realized, and breathed a sigh of relief.

They took the east fork, and proceeded to almost get run off the road by a dinosaur. "It's a frillneck," Masayoshi said as they stood atop a rock outcropping, where they had both scrambled in quite a hurry. They watched the bipedal lizard stalk slowly past.

"I come up to its hip," Gotou said.

"Still a frillneck."

"It's a fucking __dinosaur,__ Masayoshi."

Masayoshi waved the indicator on, and Gotou snorted. "I can __see__ what it says," he said. "Doesn't change the fact that we almost got eaten by Godzilla's newborn."

"It isn't __that__ big," Masayoshi said. "There's probably more of them, too. Bet we could take it." He pulled his halberd down and held it loosely in both hands.

Gotou sized up the lizard as it turned around on the path and started slowly back the way it came. "All right," he said, and Masayoshi tightened his grip on his weapon.


	3. Chapter 3

Masayoshi was right on both counts, something that Gotou was beginning to get used to. They split the drops on that particular lizard — _frillneck_ , Masayoshi insisted — and continued deeper along the path. It was strangely comfortable traveling with Masayoshi like this, it felt right — even when they were bolting off the path into the hills trying to evade the four or so enemies that Masayoshi triggered trying to pick fruit. "I hope those apples are _worth_ it," Gotou heaved, standing on a rocky outcropping. There was a small pool here, a trickle of a waterfall that gathered and looked clean and clear. He was suddenly very thirsty, for the first time that he'd noticed.

Masayoshi held out one of the apples — Gotou was certain it _was_ an apple, no matter what his display told him otherwise. It was red and cheerfully round, a single green leaf still attached to its stalk. Gotou took his gauntlets off and crouched down to rinse it in the water. He wiped it dry and took a bite, then made a face.

"It's not an apple," Gotou said as Masayoshi washed the ones he hadn't dropped in their flight.

"It's not?" Masayoshi held it up and squinted at it. "What is it, then?"

"Hell if I know, it's a lot sweeter than an apple." Gotou took another bite. "S'good … just, not what you're expecting it to be."

Masayoshi nodded and continued to rinse the fruit.

The voice chat came about a quarter of an hour later. Gotou had the thought of filling some of his empty flasks with the sparkling water, which tasted better than any water he'd had before. "Probably has kerub piss in it for flavor," he said when Masayoshi commented, and Masayoshi made such a face that he couldn't contain his snort of laughter.

 _Hey, where the hell are you, Leader?_

Gotou blinked and looked skyward, then glanced at Masayoshi who was sitting on the rock outcropping with his sabatons beside him, bare feet in the cool water. "Green?" Gotou said, and Masayoshi nodded.

" _We_ _'re by a small waterfall and pool,"_ Masayoshi said, addressing the chat directly. " _Deep in frillneck territory._ _"_

 _Knew it. You took the wrong fork, you_ _'re nowhere near the Airon Desert._

"Well, if he's so smart and knowledgeable why doesn't he come to _us_ then?" Gotou muttered, shifting his flasks of water back into his inventory.

 _If either of you knew how to read a map we wouldn_ _'t have to._

"Hey, reading a map is the least of my worries when I'm staring down the gullet of a fuckin' dinosaur," Gotou said, standing upright. He hadn't addressed the chat previously, but if Green could hear him anyway then, whatever.

"We can still come to you," Masayoshi said, giving Gotou a Look. "It's not a big deal."

 _There_ _'s a shortcut not far from where you're at now. Some spiders and earth spirits, but nothing too hazardous._

Gotou rolled his eyes as Masayoshi acknowledged and ended the chat. "Don't be like that, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, pulling his armored boots back on.

"Okay, for one — that's not how armor even _works_ , you shouldn't be able to just, take it off so easily," Gotou said, and Masayoshi shook his head.

"The boots of my uniforms have _always_ been easy to get on and off," he said earnestly, as if that was the issue at hand.

" _Anyway_ ," Gotou said. "It's creepy that someone can, like, cut in at any point. What sort of shit could someone overhear, that's _really_ intrusive."

"Only people on your friends list can message you," Masayoshi reminded him. "And since we're in a party I added you to the chat before, so if I accept a message you can hear it too! Even if we're not together." He stood up and shuffled a moment, staring at his feet and making certain that his sabatons were on correctly.

"I bet the spiders are huge," Gotou muttered, mostly under his breath and arms crossed stubbornly.

Masayoshi picked up his halberd and got himself situated, then patted Gotou's head absently as he passed. "They won't be that bad," he said, stepping back up on the rock to reorient himself. "We're a higher level. Probably." Gotou touched the top of his head with one hand, ears pink as he sputtered indignantly.

* * *

The spiders were in fact, very large.

And very, _very_ aggressive.

Fortunately, Masayoshi was right and they were a lower level and fairly easy kills, all things considered. The two of them stood in the natural crevasse between two verdant green slopes of hill to catch their breath — part of the 'short cut' Green had given them. "Potions are bitter as hell," Gotou complained, pulling a face after chugging one of the red flasks he kept in his inventory. It was frankly weird to see his physical status reduced to a red bar above his head … but hey, as long as that red bar was _full_ he wasn't _too_ upset by it.

There were some earth spirits floating along the crest of the two hills. They didn't have to go up, so they had avoided the earth spirits altogether. They were brown, rocky creatures that floated around in set paths, trailing a haze of dirt and dust. Masayoshi watched them, leaning against his halberd with a distant look on his face.

"Masayoshi?" Gotou asked, and Masayoshi shook his head as if waking from a trance before he glanced back to Gotou.

"Oh! Your health is restored. We can keep going."

"Yeah." There was a pause, and Gotou decided to press forward anyway. "Do me a favor, and lay off the area-of-effect attacks, would you? I feel like I take more damage from you than I do the monsters sometimes." The emptied flask disappeared from his hand, back into his inventory.

Masayoshi swung his head around, his eyes wide as he regarded Gotou. " _I_ _'m_ hurting you?"

"Yeah, some of your attacks…" Gotou trailed off when he saw the expression on Masayoshi's face. "Hey, don't look at me like that, I'm fine." He thumped the breastplate of his armor. "Some of your sweeping ranged attacks cause me some damage too, it's not _that_ big of a deal. I'm a sturdy build, remember? We're different classes…."

"I won't use those attacks any more," Masayoshi said in all seriousness.

Gotou sighed and decided it wasn't worth the energy at the moment. "Let's go on, okay? We can talk about this later." He took a step forward toward the main path and hesitated when Masayoshi didn't move. He _knew_ he shouldn't have said anything. "Seriously, do we have to do this right now?"

Masayoshi shook his head and pointed up the slope of the hill. "Gotou-san, look," he said. "Those aren't … players, are they?"

Gotou looked along the line of sight where Masayoshi was pointing. There was what Gotou first took to be a regular player crouched next to one of the trees that tilted at an angle from the soil. He was pretty certain it _was_ a player, as it didn't look like any of the NPC enemies that the quests in this area had — and Gotou realized, as he brought up a map, that it _was_ a player.

"Enemy faction," Gotou said quietly. "Look at your map, Masayoshi."

How had they forgotten? Even if the encounters were rare on this map, this _was_ a PVP-enabled zone. The lore of the game had two different factions, enemies who fought each other as well as the monsters on the terrain. So far they had stayed well clear of PVP zones because Masayoshi made noises about how he didn't like the idea behind it, but now…? Things _might_ just get ugly.

"Let's talk to them," Masayoshi suggested, loudly, taking a step in that direction.

Gotou caught him by the arm and yanked him back."If we can see them on our radar, that means that _they_ can see _us._ " He looked back up the slope, it was too far away to make out the enemy's class. "Do you _really_ want to engage an enemy hostile in PVP?"

"That's why we _talk_ to them, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said patiently. "If we can sort things out reasonably-"

The enemy stood up, back still to them. They were watching over the crest of the hill — and after a moment they jumped atop a rock that jutted out over the sharp incline of the hillside. They leaped off the cliff, black tattered wings spreading as they headed west, out toward the desert; along the path that Masayoshi and Gotou had planned to take.

Gotou exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "We have to be more careful," he said, still holding Masayoshi's arm tightly. "Unless you want to fight them, they're going to attack first and to hell with the questions. They want your AP more than your friendship."

Masayoshi still watched off in the direction that the enemy had vanished, his bangs shadowed so that Gotou couldn't see his eyes. "We don't have to fight," he said, insistently, and then pulled his arm free of Gotou's grip.

"Yeah, I meant to ask how you planned on dealing with that when we made it to a PVP map," Gotou said dryly, stepping out around the hill, his eyes open for movement. "Unless you're just not gonna fight back and respawn frequently." His stomach twisted at the thought of watching Masayoshi die, over and over. "Don't do that," he added.

"It's just a game," Masayoshi muttered.

"Yeah, except for us," Gotou said, and Masayoshi didn't respond. "I'll fight," he said, looking back at Masayoshi. "I might not be good at it, and I might get killed, but I'm the group's shield." He patted the edge of the shield that was slung over his back. "I'll protect you, even if you won't fight."

Masayoshi shook his head and stomped past Gotou, onto the main path proper. He looked up and down it both directions, then turned back and looked at Gotou. "I'm supposed to protect _you_ , Gotou-san," he argued back. "How can I do that if I'm causing you damage, too?"

"Just forget it," Gotou said with a sigh. "It's barely anything and I regret having ever brought it up." He rested his arm on the hilt of his sword, riding on his hip. "I think I see the start of the desert wastes up ahead, look at how quickly the trees start to thin out." Masayoshi looked in that direction and nodded, before starting off down the path that way. Gotou followed a few steps behind. "Wasn't the instance back in the swamp?"

"Yeah," Masayoshi said. "It still has a lot of time before it resets, we can only hit it once per day."

"Well, we better get to the bottom of this when it resets, because I do _not_ want to have to spend another day here."

Masayoshi nodded his head and didn't say another word.

* * *

It was comfortable and easy to kill things in this environment. Masayoshi really didn't like how that felt, how _easy_ it was. True, this was a video game; and monsters were _monsters_ , of course — he had faced down and fought and, arguably, _killed_ monsters in the real world. That was to protect the greater good, to protect others and not just himself.

The same argument could be made for the monsters here, though, digital though they were … and to protect Gotou, he would do a _lot_ without even thinking twice. Masayoshi would fight, he knew it in an instant, didn't even really have to think about that — but it didn't change the fact that he wanted to take the diplomatic route first if it was an option, that he would first say that they didn't _have_ to do this, that it didn't have to come to blows.

Besides, it wasn't like killing an enemy meant he was ending them their existence. Their character would respawn back wherever they'd bound.

Masayoshi exhaled a breath when he remembered that fact, and suddenly he felt worlds better. Yes. This was a video game for everyone else, killing their character wasn't actually killing anyone. Just points in a column. It was so easy to forget, when he was here and they … weren't.

He heard Gotou clunking along behind him. Masayoshi moved faster than Gotou at the same pace — taller build, longer stride as well as the fact that gladiators had a speed boost to their stats that templars didn't. He made a conscious effort to slow down, to keep a pace so that the distance between them didn't grow, but it happened all the same. Masayoshi couldn't resist a small jab. "Gotou-san, you're so _slow_ ," he said teasingly, turning around to jog backwards for a moment.

"I'll fight you," Gotou called, as Masayoshi slowed his pace again to allow Gotou to catch up. "I will, Masayoshi, I _swear_ I'll fight you."

Masayoshi grinned and turned about again. It was nice, that they'd thought to make their characters at least _resemble_ themselves, even if they weren't one hundred percent accurate. Gotou looked really, really good in his armor even if he was … _short._

The Airon Desert was called such because of the flocks of airon, a tall bird that roamed around its sandy wastes. They weren't aggressive, and some would scatter away, honking, if they passed too close. "Those things look like a flamingo and a dinosaur went at it," Gotou said as they passed a particularly brightly-marked bunch.

"More like an ostrich," Masayoshi said, slowing his jog again to allow Gotou time to catch up. "Besides, aren't dinosaurs and birds related?" He could see the slope of the dune that Green had directed them to — there were some unnamed garrison guard NPCs standing at its base, and near the top he could see several players moving around.

"Must be an outpost," Gotou said, stopping beside him.

"Took you guys long enough," Green's voice called irritably. "What, did you stop to take a nap?"

"I _really_ like your friends," Gotou said dryly, as they started toward the outpost.

"They're great," Masayoshi repeated enthusiastically, ignoring Gotou's tone entirely.

Both the NPCs nodded their heads in greeting as they passed, and one remarked idly to the other, "lots of traffic today?" Masayoshi noticed Gotou's interest in their conversation.

"It's rude to eavesdrop, Gotou-san."

"They're _NPCs_ , Masayoshi, it's not eavesdropping if it's what they're programmed to do." He lowered his voice as he walked beside Masayoshi. "Although I'm beginning to wonder what, exactly they _are_ programmed for."

The outpost was hardly that. Most of the people at the top of the hill were players - there was a large, old, mostly-dead tree - which Masayoshi only jumped slightly when it moved and addressed some of the players. Aside from the fencing and scrub, it was the only thing there

Green was sitting on the fencing, his sorcerer's robe unbuttoned to display the light armor underneath. He was fanning himself ineffectively with a book, Masayoshi blinked and looked at the blue cloudless sky and realized he himself was sweating. He'd been so deep in thought he hadn't noticed the change in temperature.

At least Green lived up to his name, his robe and armor all in varying shades; his hair even tinted a dark green.

"Midorikawa," Gotou greeted him tersely.

"We made it," Masayoshi said, as if that wasn't plainly obvious. "Where's Black?"

Green pushed his glasses up his nose, glanced at Gotou for a moment before addressing Masayoshi. "... he went to make certain you two made it safely. There's been some enemy activity recently, a rift opened between the two factions."

"We saw," Gotou said. "One of them, at least."

Green nodded. "Black took care of them, I think. He'll be back shortly."

Masayoshi said without preamble, "You're here, aren't you." He sensed Gotou tense behind him, but what use was there in being all secretive about it? They needed to get a handle on what was going on.

"If by 'here', you mean 'trapped within the game', then you are indeed correct." Green sat the large book on his lap and put both his palms on it. "I've been here for almost a full day, Black too. We were running in an instance, and when we came out of it we couldn't log off." He cocked his head at Masayoshi, squinting. "You are in the same boat."

Masayoshi nodded. "The instance run out of the kerub swap?"

Green shook his head. "We were in the aethergenetics lab."

"Great," Gotou said. "Two different instances. It's spreading."

"Not necessarily," Green said. "I haven't noticed anyone else — it's pretty easy to tell who is _playing_ and who is not."

"What about Blue, or Pink?" Masayoshi asked. "I see that they're both logged in, but I can't reach out to them."

"You were the first person I could contact on my friends list," Green said. "I have to wonder if its usage is restricted to those of us caught up in this." He sighed, pushed up his glasses again as they'd slipped down, aided by the sweat. "I've been using my time to read up on lore, and my spellbook."

Suddenly, a small dark figure jumped up the fence behind Green, both hands on the old wood as they flipped over into a three-point landing. "Sorry to interrupt," Black said, standing up, brushing his hands over his outfit.

"You're a-" Gotou said, then stopped himself, and covered his mouth with one hand, looking away.

"I did indeed choose a female avatar," Black's voice was still his own, despite the small frame of the female character in front of them. "I liked the aesthetic."

"That's so weird," Gotou said, still looking away, mouth still covered with his hand.

Green shrugged. "You get used to it."

"So why call us all the way out here, where it's roasting?" Gotou asked finally, focusing back on Green while Masayoshi stared at Black's small form.

"The Elim," Green gestured toward the tall, half-dead tree that was talking animatedly to some of the players. "Lodas, please."

The tree-creature abruptly bowed to the players, and shuffled over, causing Gotou and Masayoshi both to scoot aside. "Daeva Green," the Elim said, its words slow and heavy. "These are... your friends?"

The Elim towered over them all, but unlike the ones that had startled him earlier, this tree had no leaves in its branches. Even the beard on its face which should have been green and mossy was a dried, brittle brown.

Masayoshi bowed in front of the tree. "I am Masayoshi," he said. "And this is Gotou."

The Elim called Lodas inclined its body in a bow as well. "We meet ... in Ariel's light," he said.

He glanced back to Green, who had slid off the fence, book tucked under his arm now. "Tell them what you told me, please," he said.

"There is a great ... cataclysm," the Elim said slowly. "Greater than ... the rift between our worlds. It threatens ... all of us."

"Sounds like a quest to me," Gotou murmured. Masayoshi elbowed him.

"It is ... no laughing matter ... young daeva," Lodas said, his tone labored. "If he ... is not stopped ... then this world ... will be no more." The tree took a long, tired breath. "This land ... is changing. ...Dying. ... Arbolo can tell you ... more."

"The Elim share knowledge through their roots and magic," Green said. "But their network isn't what it used to be, it's broken and fading. That's all he was able to tell me."

"Thank you," Masayoshi said, bowing to the tree again. "King of the Forest."

"Faith and arms, daeva."

Masayoshi looked back to Green as the Elim shuffled back to its original position, where a few players were idling. "So what does it mean?"

"It means," Green said, "that we have a lot of work to do."

* * *

The sun sank past the mountains — the sky was still lit, but now just shades of purple. It never got truly dark, Gotou figured it was just a game mechanic because as a player you didn't pay attention to the in-game time, you just kept doing what you were doing. Now however he could see the pillar of light that erupted from beyond the horizon, glittering now that it caught the fading sun's rays.

For the first time since he'd woken in the game, Gotou felt the pull of nature. He yawned, thinking at least to cover his mouth with his hand as he jogged behind Masayoshi along the dune. They'd split up - Green to Sanctum, and the great library of the daevas to see if he could find anything on a coming cataclysm, or anything that might "change" the nature of a daeva. "We can keep in contact," Green said, tapping his fingers on the book. "Chat seems to work for us, at least."

"For the awakened," Masayoshi said, his voice odd for a moment. He blinked and shook his head as if to clear it, then nodded sharply.

It was amusing to him that Black ran faster than either of them. He wore the avatar of a gunslinger - Gotou's reaction to that was at first disbelief, then a nod because, yes, that fit. Although he still couldn't wrap his head around guns in this fantasy world, but that was his own problem.

"I'll go as far as the fortress with you," Black said, having stopped to allow the two warrior-class players to catch up. He was staring up at the darkening sky. "The teleporters won't work after dark."

"What?" Gotou said, feeling for the first time winded. "That's the first I've heard of that, why not?"

Black shrugged and flipped the long dark ponytail over his shoulder. Masayoshi cocked his head, leaning on his polearm and breathing equally hard. "How long have you been in the game, Black?"

"Longer than you," he said simply, and tilted his head toward the hills, where the wind rustled through the leaves ominously. Gotou could hear the frillnecks crying out, their shrill cries echoing through the landscape. Suddenly, this felt less like a game. "We're not going to make it before the teleporters close down."

"Does that mean we're stuck out here?" Gotou asked, feeling the hair raise on the back of his neck at the call of some creature yet unseen. "All night?"

"The teleportation to the Shard works after dark," Black said. "That's where I'm headed, you can come as well."

"That's the PVP-heavy zone, no thank you," Gotou said, as a puzzled expression crossed Masayoshi's face. "The abyss, Masayoshi. I don't think you've been."

"You have, Gotou-san?"

"And promptly got my ass kicked, so I'm not in a hurry to go back."

"Then I guess you'll be staying here," Black said simply. "Come on, the fortress doesn't shut down at dark, just the transportation."

* * *

The fortress in this zone was much different than the previous. Gotou had been here a few times in passing, but things were much different (and much more impressive) from this view as they started down the side of a cliff, headed toward the bowl of a great valley.

The structure resembled an enormous tree in its shape, springing from the ground and reaching skyward, but there was no living growth to its core. The center column was in fact hollowed out, and a small platform lifted at regular intervals up, taking visitors right into the center of the fortress. Here was a free-flying zone, however, as players would leap from the many platforms and glide safely to the valley's floor, or take off from the ground and flap upwards, toward the sky.

"Whoa," Gotou said as they made it to the basin, neck craned upwards. There were things suspended in the air here, floating rock platforms, small bursts of glowing green energy.

"Impressed?" Masayoshi asked with a grin, elbowing Gotou.

"You wish," Gotou said, and elbowed Masayoshi back.

Black watched them with a strange expression, not that Gotou was that familiar with Masayoshi's former teammates. He shook his head, arms crossed. "I'm going to the Shard," he said. "Last chance to tag along."

Masayoshi looked hesitantly over at Gotou, then seemed to come to a decision and shook his head decisively. "No," he said. "While I don't like the idea of everyone splitting up, we need to get to Arbolu."

"That's not going to happen tonight, either way," Black pointed out.

Gotou stifled another yawn, and Masayoshi looked at him again. "Tired, Gotou-san?"

"Exhausted," Gotou said truthfully. "Do you even sleep, here?" Gotou asked Black specifically.

"I nap here and there," Black said. "I don't really notice that I'm tired."

"That's not going to happen tonight, either way," Black pointed out.

Gotou stifled another yawn, and Masayoshi looked at him again. "Tired, Gotou-san?"

"Exhausted," Gotou said truthfully. He elbowed Masayoshi back again, the armor making a rough metallic sound when it made contact. "Aren't _you_ tired?"

"A little bit," Masayoshi admitted. "Also I'm _really_ hungry. I just noticed that. S'weird, if I'm not thinking about it it's like I'm ... I don't know." Masayoshi gestured with his hands, and Gotou nodded. "But when I slow down to think about it, I feel tired and hungry and worn _out_."

Black looked between them, then nodded up at the fortress. "Crash for the night," he said. "Get used to being here. Green or I'll contact you when the teleporters open again; you can use scrolls even when they're sending people across zones. We can pick up tomorrow where we left off."

"But the cataclysm thing sounded kinda _urgent_ ," Masayoshi said. Gotou caught his arm, tugged him toward the fortress " _Gotou-san!_ "

"Urgent, yes - but what good will either of us do half-dead from exhaustion? Let's go eat and sleep and regroup, 'yoshi." He nodded at the petite form of Black, who had his arms crossed over a not-considerable chest. "See you tomorrow, Black."

* * *

"It isn't like there's an inn or anywhere we can bum a bed, or even a pile of straw," Gotou said with an aggravated sigh. It was dark now, but the fortress was lit by magic, glowing orbs interspersed like lanterns, great energy that flowed all around it. People were all about, although there were less players than NPCs, and the nonplayer characters seemed to be interacting with each other outside of their usual scripts.

There had been a food seller, a small tavern situated across a perilously thin bridge run by a large rodent-like creature called a Shugo. It came up to Gotou's chest and resembled an oversized ferret, and had a peculiar catch to its speech pattern. Gotou fully expected to be pulling long strands of golden fur out of his meal, but it tasted so delicious that forgot his discomfort at being served by a bipedal animal.

Food, and drink - all tasted wonderful, but not like what he expected it to taste like. Gotou was already over this strangeness, too hungry to even care any longer he scoffed his food quickly and was left to watch Masayoshi slowly eat his own. There felt like something he should be _doing,_ with his hands, as he waited ... and it was with a pang that he remembered his cell phone, left on the table with his cigarettes. Well, it wasn't like he had anticipated going for an adventure in the world of a fucking video game, she'd forgive him.

Instantly he felt overwhelmingly guilty. Gotou swallowed and stood up. "I'm getting more to drink," he said when Masayoshi glanced up at him quizzically, and Gotou strode across the tavern to where the food seller lingered behind a counter.

He wasn't supposed to be thinking of _her_ anymore. It hurt in his chest when he thought like that, when he realized how long it had been since he last thought of her, it hurt so hard he couldn't breathe and here he didn't have a cigarette to try to calm his nerves, to try to hide that something was wrong. He took the flagon of ale - bitter and heavy - and sat down again across from Masayoshi, who was watching him with too-sharp eyes. "Everything okay, Gotou-san?" Masayoshi asked, and Gotou nodded his head and didn't answer.

Once fed they wandered the fortress, but Gotou had spoken truly. There wasn't anywhere for tired warriors to bed down.

They sat side by side in the large great hall, backs to concrete as they watched people bustle around. "Oh," Masayoshi said suddenly. "We should go to my studio, I wonder if that works."

Gotou had been resting his head in his hand, braced on one knee. He lifted his head slowly and glanced at Masayoshi. "Your _what?_ " He had an inkling he remembered, it sounded like something related to one of the quests he hadn't gotten around to finishing.

"I have a studio in Oriel, it's the residential district," Masayoshi said. "I think I even have a bed, if not that then big old stuffed chairs I won off a prize machine. I can't believe I forgot."

"Oriel's another zone, isn't it?" Gotou said with a yawn. "We can't go there anyway, not until dawn."

Masayoshi stood up. "I can summon a teleportation gate," he said, one hand on his hip as he gestured in the air, and a small, single-person sized portal opened in front of him. Gotou eyed it, and looked at Masayoshi.

"Enjoy your bed then," he said, aware of the dull ache that still sat heavy in his chest and seemed to grow at the thought of being left behind again, even for something as short a span as a night.

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi grabbed at his arm and tugged, pulling a surprised Gotou to his feet. "My portal can accommodate group members, come on, you come too."

"Ah," Gotou said, as Masayoshi shoved him forward.

* * *

Masayoshi shoved Gotou through the portal with both hands. He watched his friend stagger and then disappear into the gold-rimmed portal, then put his hands on his hips and sighed, glancing around the fortress a final time before he too stepped through the portal.

What he didn't notice, as he stepped through the hovering, shimmering portal, was the dark figure watching them attentively from the upper level.

* * *

The game system allowed each player their own private area. For those who didn't want to shell out the extra in-game money for prime real estate, they were granted a single-room "studio", with the option to furnish however they'd like, and a personal Shugo butler.

"Greetings, daeva," the Shugo butler said as Gotou staggered into the room, still off balance from the healthy shove administered by Masayoshi. He turned around and straightened, as Masayoshi stepped through the door, the portal vanishing behind him.

"You have a butler," Gotou said.

"Yes, he comes with the studio," Masayoshi said. "I assume he takes care of it when you haven't been for a while - you haven't gotten yours? That's a low-level quest, Gotou-san! You can get more inventory storage!"

There were quite a few low level quests that Gotou had skipped entirely. He shrugged loosely, glancing around at the one large room.

The studio was bigger than his apartment in reality, although the walls were smooth and had but a single door. By the station where the Shugo butler stood was a small pedestal with a glowing blue orb; and there was some sparse furnishings. Several large, overstuffed, gaudy as hell armchairs, a table by the entrance with several small potted plants, and pushed back in the corner, a bed. "Huh," Gotou said, looking at the plants. "Home sweet home, I guess?"

"It's a _bed_ ," Masayoshi said, pulling off his gauntlets. "I am so tired I feel like I'm going to sleep for a _week._ "

Gotou looked around again. "So I don't suppose this place has _facilities_ , huh?"

"Ask the Shugo," Masayoshi said, leaning his weapon against the wall carefully.

"Ack-ack-ack-ack," the Shugo said when Gotou turned to address it. "How can I be of assistance?"

"Bathroom," Gotou asked. "Where is it?"

The Shugo stared at him, then cocked his head and blinked once, slowly. "I don't understand."

"Facilities. Place to take a leak."

Silence from the Shugo. "I don't understand."

Gotou sighed. "Game's not constructed with toilets, I'm going outside to piss."

Masayoshi glanced over at him and nodded. "It _should_ let you back in but I'll stay in here just in case it doesn't."

"Don't you have to go too?"

"You're not supposed to urinate in public, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said.

"Yeah, but that rule's for places that _have_ bathrooms." Gotou raised his hand. "I'll be back in a minute."

Walking out the door of the studio took him to a small balcony. Gotou leaned forward, hands on the rails - just like in the previous zone, while the sky had gone dark it wasn't _truly_ dark, the world stayed in a permanent state of twilight until the sun rose. There wasn't much activity on the path below, although there were a couple of tents and stalls that were likely inhabited by NPCs during the daylight hours.

It took a minute to find stairs, and then once he was on the ground he walked around the back of the building, planning to take a leak on the brushes and scrub that were behind the building. Gotou did _not_ expect the several large deer-like creatures who were grazing back there - they startled each other an equal amount, and Gotou's sword was in his hand by instinct alone, but the creatures scattered off into the trees behind the building.

He hesitated a long moment before sheathing his sword.

* * *

Masayoshi was already in the bed by the time Gotou returned, curled up on his side and most of the way toward asleep. Gotou smiled despite himself, then looked at the Shugo who was watching them both. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" he asked the creature, who shuffled uncomfortably.

"Here to serve daeva, ack-ack-ack-ack."

"Serve daeva by standing guard outside the door, okay? It's creepy you in here, watching him sleep." Gotou laid his sword and shield on the table, and looked up at the Shugo, who was still standing there. "Go!"

"Live to serve," the Shugo said, and shuffled out the door.

Masayoshi lifted his head sleepily. "Come to bed, Gotou-san."

"I thought you had to piss," Gotou said, taking off his armor slowly. It was strange to shed it, he didn't feel any different without it, except now he could feel the temperature of the room, and the slow chill that rolled across him.

"Too sleepy'll do it in the morning." Masayoshi snuggled down under his sheet. "C'mon, it's cold, come get in bed."

"I'll sleep in the chair," Gotou said, shivering more as he set his armor beside the table. "Go to sleep, Masayoshi."

Masayoshi sat up, put his hands in his lap and _glared_ at Gotou. "This bed is enormous, Gotou-san. I am _not_ sleeping in it alone."

Gotou hesitated, glanced at the chair - which was probably more uncomfortable than it looked - and sighed in resignation. "Fine, but you gotta go out and piss first, I do _not_ want to wake up to you wetting the bed because you misjudged how big your bladder is in this body."

Masayoshi grinned at him, sleepily.


	4. Chapter 4

The Balaur were an invading race, an threat meant to unite the two warring factions of the game against one larger threat. They were not a playable race, just enemies of all players, which meant that they behaved in particular patterns, that their dredgions appeared in certain places at certain times of the day or night, and that there was generally no guesswork involved in engaging or avoiding them.

Which made their newfound autonomy all the more peculiar. Green sat on a bench in the Sanctum library, a pile of books and reports spread out all in front of him. The reports had come from garrisons all over the land, throughout many different zones - the Balaur threat was growing, and quickly too. Requests for more troops, more supplies, more support ... everything was funneled through Sanctum and then archived here.

He was having little luck on finding lore about players imprisoned in the game - daeva, which was the term used for the players by the NPCs, were imprisoned all the time but not in the sense he was looking for. It was slow and frustrating, and as Green skimmed through report after report he began to see a pattern, and a larger picture of something happening that was beyond the boundaries of the game itself.

Elysea was falling, slowly but surely, to the Balaur.

One of the outposts was wiped off the map entirely. He'd had _quests_ there, still had quests to turn in, but it was gone. Reports from NPC garrison soldiers on the devastation sat before him. Green took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes sleepily, felt the burn of staying awake for too long behind them. There was no night in Sanctum, and even twilight was as bright as the morning.

He'd been in the game for three days.

That was two too many.

Green set his glasses on his nose and squinted across at the papers spread all in front of him. What did it all _mean?_ If he didn't find out soon, more people would be trapped. That alone was keeping him going. Green yawned, rubbed his hand over his mouth and leaned forward, pulling a bundle of unread scrolls toward him. He couldn't stop now.

* * *

Gotou woke slowly, drowsily. He was warm and comfortable, but the ceiling above was different. There wasn't daylight creeping in, but a faint, unnatural glow that made him sit up slowly, rubbing his eyes and squinting across the room. There was an unhappy murmur from beside him as the sheet was pulled up by his movement, and Gotou glanced over at Masayoshi in half-awake confusion.

Oh, bed. They'd shared a bed because there wasn't any other place to sleep. Gotou leaned over to nudge Masayoshi awake, one hand braced on the mattress between them, but Masayoshi wrapped his arms around Gotou's and turned his face down, eyes squeezed tight. "Oi," Gotou said, slightly aggravated. "Masayoshi."

"'f I 'pen my eyes this has t' end," Masayoshi mumbled, and curled in to himself just a touch more, pulling on Gotou's arm a bit.

His brow furrowed, Gotou leaned over, about to shove Masayoshi in the shoulder when Masayoshi chose that moment to roll onto his back, Gotou's arm still clasped tightly in one hand. This knocked Gotou completely off balance and he fell forward, right across Masayoshi on the bed; which made Masayoshi squawk and squirm in surprise.

He wasn't the only one, Gotou push off of Masayoshi, one hand on his face, and managed to get himself physically off of Masayoshi, shrugging off the tight grip Masayoshi had. "What the _fuck_ ," Gotou gasped, fists in the mattress, "is _wrong_ with you?"

Masayoshi's mouth opened just slightly, blue eyes large and dazed as he looked up at Gotou. Abruptly Gotou realized that he had his hands on either side of Masayoshi's head now and shoved off again, sitting up properly, shifting and putting his back toward Masayoshi. "This is why I didn't want to share the bed," he muttered loud enough for Masayoshi to hear. With his back toward Masayoshi at least he couldn't see how pink Gotou's face had turned, or even sense how hard his heart was beating. What the hell, Masayoshi hadn't looked _cute_ like that, or ... or _worse..._

"Sorry, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said earnestly, and sat up as well. "Did you sleep well at least?"

"We're not talking about this," Gotou said, but didn't move to get out of the bed yet, the chill of the room biting at his bare chest.

"Talking about ... what?" Masayoshi asked, hands in his lap and staring at Gotou, clearly confused by Gotou's tone of voice. Gotou glanced back at him, saw his wild hair and expression, and then curled his hands into fists, before throwing the sheet off and hauling himself out of the bed. It wasn't like there was any place to go in the single-room studio, so instead Gotou stomped over to where he'd left his armor in an unceremonious pile by the table near the entrance.

"Greetings, daeva!" the Shugo butler said from just outside the door, leaning his head into the room.

" _Shit_ ," Gotou said, jumping in surprise. "Goddammit, don't _do_ that!"

"Don't yell at the Shugo," Masayoshi said, still seated in the bed and watching Gotou with an unfamiliar expression. Gotou took a deep breath and grabbed his breeches from the pile, slowly getting dressed. If he focused on how angry he was, and if he got dressed quick enough, maybe that would be enough to forget the sudden painful ache in his lower half.

Masayoshi was his _friend_ , fucking _hell._

"Why are you so upset?" Masayoshi asked, scooting to the edge of the bed, lower half still covered by the twist of sheets. Gotou refused to look at him. "Gotou-san."

"I need-" coffee, ten cigarettes, and to pin you to the bed right _now_ "coffee," he said. He could tell Masayoshi didn't quite believe him, but he didn't question it. "I'll wait outside, c'mon, haul up," he said. "We've got a lot of ground to cover before dark tonight, if we want to get home."

"Yeah," Masayoshi said, still seated in the bed as Gotou, fully dressed and armed, stepped out of the studio.

"Greetings, daeva-!" the Shugo butler said desperately as he disappeared.

* * *

Masayoshi twisted his hands in the sheets and tried very desperately not to think about how Gotou's weight had felt across him, heavy and comfortable, hot and _right_. It was hard to swallow around the strange lump in his throat, or deal with the strange hollow ache that contact had left him with, but he _was_ going to deal with it, then he was going to get out of this bed and get dressed and follow Gotou-san in his quest for a stimulant.

He pressed his hand over the outside of the underwear he had on, felt the warmth and the hardness there, then bit his lip and glanced to the door. It wasn't like there were bathrooms here he could lock himself in and deal with this, because ignoring it was not an option as much as he was thinking about how close Gotou had been.

Masayoshi slid his fingers into the waistband of his underwear, started to pull it down and thought; _quickly._

* * *

Gotou stood at the end of the row of studios, hands on his hips, and sighed heavily. He was being a dick, he knew he was being a dick, and he needed to apologize to Masayoshi. Odds were good that Masayoshi had just flopped back over and gone to sleep, because if he didn't oversee Masayoshi stumbling out of bed he would do just that - unless they were so fortunate that Ishihara was waiting on him, in which case Masayoshi would be bright eyed and bushy-tailed with very little prompting.

The Shugo butler still stood outside of Masayoshi's studio, dressed in his little tailored suit, wringing his paws. "Nyerk," he said, when he spotted Gotou, eyes wide.

"You're not saying your script," Gotou accused, and the Shugo shuffled and avoided eye contact. "Whatever," Gotou said, and stuck his head back into the door. "Oi, 'yoshi, get a move on-..."

Masayoshi was indeed still in bed, but he was at least sitting up. However, he had his underwear around one ankle and his hand fisted around his dripping cock, his eyes wide and horrified, not that Gotou spared the second for his eyes to drift in that direction.

Gotou closed his eyes, then spun and wordlessly headed back out.

"Gotou-san!" Masayoshi wailed, and he heard him very loudly get out of bed, trip in the tangle of sheets, and scramble to his feet. He glanced over his shoulder to see Masayoshi fling himself out the door, underwear left on the floor somewhere and Gotou's eyes snapped immediately to his face.

"Don't chase me naked!" he yelled.

"But Gotou-san-!"

Oh god, he was still _hard_. Gotou turned and faced forward and stormed down the row of studios, Masayoshi on his heels. "Fucking put on some _pants,_ don't point that thing at me _!_ " Gotou yelled without turning around, hearing Masayoshi's bare feet behind.

"Gotou-san, please come back, we'll talk-!"

"GET DRESSED WE'LL TALK THEN!" he bellowed, and this time someone stuck their head out from another studio. Gotou turned bright red, turned around and pointed back toward Masayoshi's studio. "GET. DRESSED."

The player who stuck their head out looked between Gotou and Masayoshi with the most peculiar expression. "Sorry," Gotou said, as he shoved Masayoshi back in the direction of his own studio. "I've - sorry."

"Yeah, okay," the other player said, and disappeared back into their own studio.

* * *

Gotou was standing outside the building the housed the studios, across the path from some vendors who had set up shop where the players passed by. He watched the warehouse vendor talk animatedly to a Shugo, only stopping when a player stopped by to check their inventory or make a sale. The warehouse vendor had tried to engage with Gotou, a bright "hail, daeva!" as he settled in across the path, but Gotou just gave a small wave and glanced back at the studio, waiting for Masayoshi.

It took him a good few minutes to appear - probably trying to figure out how to deal with clean-up without the aid of running water. Gotou shuddered at the thought, and made a mental note to remind himself that he was sleeping in the chair tonight if they hadn't figured a way out of this game by nightfall. Or, he could always just do the fucking studio quest himself and get his own damn place, but that also required figuring out how to get _furniture_ , and right now that time was better spent figuring out how to escape this fantasy hell.

Masayoshi appeared in full armor, carrying his halberd. He only looked a _little_ sheepish, not nearly enough, his ears still pink. "Gotou-san," he started, and Gotou held up a hand.

"No," he said. "We're not talking about it now."

"But you said when I got _dressed_ -"

"I lied," Gotou said, and crossed his arms. He glared up at Masayoshi as Masayoshi stopped in front of him, _hated_ looking up at him, and instead shifted his attention back to the warehouse attendant, who was watching them both a little too brightly. "The NPCs are doing their own thing," he said in an effort to divert Masayoshi's attention, because Masayoshi was gearing up an indignation at Gotou-san _lying_ , how could you _lie_ and thankfully that distraction worked. Masayoshi glanced over at the warehouse attendant, who waved at Masayoshi cheerfully. "Arieluma," she called over.

"Arieluma," Masayoshi called and smiled. He glanced back to Gotou. "What does that mean?"

"Well, it seems to be a common greeting of the land-"

"Not _that_ , Gotou-san, I meant the fact that they're acting..." Masayoshi frowned, one hand on his hip, staring at the ground and clearly searching for the terminology he wanted.

"Like real people?" Gotou murmured, and Masayoshi's head snapped up. He looked at Gotou, startled.

"Oh," Masayoshi said.

"Yeah." Gotou watched as the Shugo vendor walked around out of his booth and over to the warehouse vendor carrying a large box. "It's like, the longer we're in here, the less like a game it is."

"That's kind of scary," Masayoshi said softly.

"No shit," Gotou said. He inclined his head toward the path that curved away from the building, around a row of neatly trimmed hedges. "Shall we hit up the food vendor and see if there's something equivalent to a coffee, because if not I'm going to scream." Maybe he'd scream anyway, it seemed like it might help things.

Masayoshi agreed to this, at least. He gestured in the air thoughtfully. "I'll try to get in touch with Black and Green, see if they've gotten anywhere."

"Right," Gotou said, and they started at a steady clip down the path.

* * *

 _Whatever's going on, it affects the Balaur,_ Green's voice said, as clear as if he was sitting at the table with them. Gotou stared down into his flagon, it was steaming, full of something that the cook swore was rejuvenating but tasted suspiciously like leaves boiled in grass.

"Tea is just leaves in boiled water," Masayoshi reminded him when he complained.

"This isn't _tea_ , though," Gotou muttered, hands folded around the flagon, his gauntlets sitting on the table top beside him.

"How is it affecting the Balaur?" Masayoshi asked. "They're just ... not NPCs, but like, enemy NPCs right? They shouldn't be doing anything they're not programmed to."

 _Well, unless they're programmed to actually wipe existing bases off the map entirely, they're definitely doing whatever the hell they want right now._ Green's voice was tired, and Gotou wondered if he'd been up all night researching. _Black is actually scouting one of their Balaur strongholds now, he hasn't found the others yet._

"How long have you been in here?" Gotou asked, lifting his head. "In the game, I mean."

 _This'll be the fourth day._

Masayoshi glanced at Gotou, eyebrows up. _That long?_ "And we're the first ones you've run across since you were trapped."

 _Yes. If it's happening on a pattern, another two people will be trapped tomorrow._ Green was silent for a moment. _If it's not a pattern, there are already others who are trapped that we haven't run across._

"Well we just need to get to the bottom of this before then," Masayoshi said simply. He glanced at Gotou. "We're headed to Arbolu today, right? See what the old tree has to say?"

Gotou nodded. "What about you, Midorikawa-kun?" he asked.

 _You can just call me Green, it doesn't bother me, you know._

Masayoshi glanced at Gotou, a small smile on his face. Gotou sighed, it wasn't worth the fight right now. "Fine, Green. Have you even slept?"

 _I don't need to sleep, this is more important._ There was a stutter to his last word, as if it was broken off by a yawn.

"You _do_ need to sleep, Green!" Masayoshi said. "It'll help things! Just a small nap, you'll think clearer!"

"I agree," Gotou said, and Masayoshi beamed. "Take five, Green. We're gonna run by this Elim, we'll message you once we've talked to him."

 _Fine,_ Green said, but he didn't sound too upset. _Black will contact you once he's done reconnoitering._ There was a long silence as Green presumably disconnected, and Gotou took another pull of his drink and shuddered.

"Leaf-water," he grunted.

* * *

The food vendor was located in a small village, surrounded by ornate looking houses. "Houses," Gotou said. "You can spend your actual fake-money on a _house_." There was a teleportation pad near the entrance, and plenty of vendors wandering about, along with a hand full of players. There didn't seem to be much of any idle animation, though - if the vendors weren't speaking with players, they were talking to each other or tending to their wares.

"Let's use the teleportation pad," Masayoshi said.

"I'm not flying on that fucking _bird_ -"

"It _teleports_ here, Gotou-san. No bird."

Gotou chewed on his lip, then sighed and nodded. "Fine." He followed Masayoshi to the man, who was dressed in white robes, leaning against one of the two pillars on the pad. "Arieluma," Masayoshi said perkily, and the man straightened, tugged on his robes so that they sat better on his shoulders.

"We meet in Ariel's light," he said grandly, gesturing with his hand.

"The plaza, please," Masayoshi said. The transporter nodded and after an exchange of gold, a small portal opened, not nearly as ornate as the one Masayoshi had summoned to come here. Masayoshi glanced back at Gotou, smiled again, and then stepped through. The portal closed after him.

"Me too," Gotou said. "Plaza, please." As he stepped through the summoned portal, he thought he heard the teleporter grumble behind him. "Wish _I_ could travel more..."

The plaza was exactly that, a large open area with a fountain in the center; an obelisk and more vendors. "Now, to the zone that Arbolu is in," Masayoshi said, and Gotou heard the strain in his forced-cheerful voice. He pretended not to.

"Another teleporter?" Gotou checked his coin pouch, but he wasn't in any danger yet.

"Another, and another," Masayoshi said airily. "We gotta hop a few times to get there." They teleported again, this time into another zone, another fortress - and as they stepped through _this_ teleporter Gotou was greeted with a fortress easily three times the size of those previous. He felt the thin air, the wisp of chill that greeted a high-elevation area, and looked around, and _up._ "Whoa," he said as he stepped forward, off the teleportation pad.

"Arbolu's Haven," he heard Masayoshi say. Gotou glanced behind himself but Masayoshi was already gone. Gotou looked around again, then stepped back onto the pad. "Arbolu's haven," he said, as a woman took his gold.

"Safe journeys," she said, as the green bird appeared.

* * *

 _"You tricked me!"_ Gotou yelped once his sabatons were on the ground again. He took two steps off the transportation pad and sat heavily in the lush, dark green grass that surrounded the pad. Masayoshi was standing there waiting for him.

"I didn't," he said innocently.

"You said were were teleporting!" Gotou heaved a few breaths, dizzy and mildly ill, he swore he could feel the leaf-water sloshing around in his stomach even now. He crossed his legs and braced his hands on his knees. "Liar," he seethed.

"I didn't lie!" Masayoshi insisted. "I just ... neglected to say anything."

"Liar by _omission_ ," Gotou muttered. He could imagine the face Masayoshi was making even if he didn't look up, he had seen it enough already. Gotou rubbed his hand over his face, and back through his hair, before taking a long deep breath and then glaring up at Masayoshi.

Masayoshi had looked away, staring instead at the immense foliage the spread above their heads. The area was dimly lit, the sunlight that trickled through the leaves above them was watery and pale. There were several of the tree-beings, the Elim, shuffling around. Gotou looked well above their heads at their names. "Arbolu's gotta be a bigwig, if the place is named after him," he said.

Masayoshi pointed up. "That's Arbolu."

Gotou looked at the network of branches stretched above his head and frowned - then followed the branchs along with his eyes as they grew into trunks that sprouted from a massive growth in in the center of the outpost. "That-" he said, and stood. "That is fucking _huge._ "

"Yeah," Masayoshi said. "Let's go talk to him."

* * *

The Abyss was once the center of the planet. When the great cataclysm rent the world in two, shattering the land into a mere shell of what it was before it created this aether-filled realm, where large rocks and floating platforms housed outposts and fortresses. It was a bit like a miniature asteroid belt, Black thought as he crouched on a shard, behind the decimated ruins of an ancient statue, watching a slow-moving rock the size of a city bus float casually by. Because the realm was aether-filled, it meant that all daeva could fly, at any time - which meant one had to not only be aware of everything around them, but also above and below, as well.

He was watching a group of enemy players. Every so often they would shift, and trigger his enemy alert - which meant that he as well would show up on theirs. However, none of the blue-skinned, equipped players even so much as turned in his direction. They stood between him and the fortress he had been hunting.

The crumbling heap was not located on any map. That wouldn't surprise him normally, because ruins usually weren't marked unless they were campaign-oriented ... but this entire _island_ was not marked on the map. If he glanced at it, it looked like he was standing in the nothingness of the aether-filled space, just hovering there. This curious fact was bringing sightseers, looking for high-level quests and just the general old thrill of PVP.

There was also the warning sign that the supposedly-abandoned ruins had the occasional Indratu patrolling the broken walls. There were Balaur in the Abyss.

Black exhaled and closed his map. Green was right, the Balaur were acting outside the constraints of their game programming. It wasn't that he _doubted_ Green, but he hoped it wasn't the case. It was hard to ignore the fact that programmed NPCs had started acting out in all sorts of ways, and it was only a matter of time before the largest invading enemy force decided to change its tactics.

When he glanced back over the statue, the group of enemy players was gone. He rested one hand on his pistol, just in case, and crept over the statue. He would get as close as he could get, see what he could see - and just as he moved the enemy alert blared and he had both his pistols out, half-turning to meet his attacker instead of fleeing. The enemies clearly expected him to run, and Black grinned, spinning the guns in his hands once as the enemy players bore down on him. He didn't _run._

* * *

Arbolu was _massive_. Masayoshi had not been to this zone yet, but he'd seen pictures. The Elim was ancient and old, he'd gone rooted to his spot and the diameter of his trunk was larger than any tree Masayoshi had seen in reality. You almost couldn't comprehend his girth, and the face of such an old sage was tired and still, eyes closed and unmoving. Masayoshi climbed ahead of Gotou, up the rocky ledge that led toward the Elim's face and was almost attacked by the creature.

It was a gnarled thing, not an Elim, too small to be so - it looked like an uprooted trunk of a long-felled tree. It moved on several spindly, insect-like legs, and its front legs were clasped in front of it like a praying mantis. "Who goes, who _goes,_ " the tree-thing hissed, waving its front legs at Masayoshi, practically in his face. He staggered back a step, and Gotou almost collided with his back.

"Enemies of Arbolu will be destroyed!" the creature snarled.

Masayoshi had his halberd in his hand before he realized that the twisted thing was not doing him anything resembling damage, so he stood down, one arm out for the creature's tiny stump-arms to ping against. "We're not enemies!" he cried out.

"Lies!" the creature howled. "All daeva are enemy to my Lord Arbolu!"

Gotou touched Masayoshi's back. "Do you speak for Arbolu?" he challenged the creature, who made a hissing, clicking noise like an insect. "Do you speak for the Elim?"

"I am the voice of Lord Arbolu!" it proclaimed, scuttling back a few steps, climbing up the difficult rock face to be closer to the trunk of the tired old Elim. "You daeva are enemies, and must be destroyed!"

"Pleasant fellow," Gotou said. "I bet I can kill it in one hit."

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, scandalized. To the creature that called itself the voice of Arbolu, he half-bowed. "We do not come as enemies of your lord, but we come seeking knowledge. Lodas sent us."

It moved back and forth for a moment quickly, considering Masayoshi's words, legs waving intermittently. Finally, it capitulated. "Speak your piece, daeva - but speak quickly! Lord Arbolu's temper burns short."

"Is he sure he's talking about the tree?" Gotou murmured, and Masayoshi elbowed him hard.

"Lodas spoke of cataclysm," Masayoshi said. "That there was a bigger danger now, bigger even than the one that destroyed this land. He said you would help us."

"Keh!" the voice of Arbolu said, scuttling around, back and forth, never turning its back on them. "Lodas speaks too much, talks too much." He clicked his pincher-like legs together. "This threat is no business of the daeva, the aether streams are drying, it is daeva's fault."

"This guy isn't gonna help us, 'yoshi," Gotou said. He took a few steps back, hands on his hips. "This is a waste of time."

Masayoshi stared past the creature, at the great tree. Then he glanced back to it. "What do you want us to do, to speak with Arbolu?" he challenged suddenly. The creature paused, hesitant, then clicked its pinchers again.

"Essences," he said. "From the zombie horde. Fallen daeva, they still contain aether. Bring me twenty of those, and Arbolu will bestow his wisdom upon you."

He nodded. "Understood. We'll be back soon." Masayoshi turned, and Gotou stared at him.

"Zombies?"

"It's a quest," Masayoshi murmured. "It's not going to talk to us until we fulfill its requirements. This can't be too hard, c'mon." He didn't look back at the creature, although he heard a strange hissing laugh from behind him.

"Where the hell are we going to find zombies, _here_?" Gotou said as they stood on the path that led out of the glade protected by Arbolu. A few tamed earth spirits floated by, brown silt bodies sprouting green leaves along their heads, cleansed by Arbolu's presence. "You should have just let me rough it up a bit."

"Gotou-san, we've got to play by the _rules_ so long as we're here." Masayoshi took his halberd in one hand. "Look, on my map it's got the zombies not far from here. This won't take long, okay? Let's just go get those essences and see what all the old tree has to say."

 _Are you two even aware of how much like an old married couple you sound?_ Green's voice came out of nowhere, and it surprised them both.

"How long have you been listening in?" Gotou demanded angrily, as Masayoshi looked away, trying to obscure his blush. "That's a little rude, you know!"

 _Well, it's a little nauseating to watch you two have constant lovers' spats in the group chat,"_ Green said. _The group chat doesn't close so long as everyone's connected, you guys should know that._

Gotou slapped his face with one hand. Masayoshi cleared his throat. "Did you at least get some sleep, Green?"

 _Not much. Listen, Black is gone._

"Gone?" Gotou looked at Masayoshi. "Gone how?"

 _I don't know. I can't contact him, and he's not showing as a member of our group any longer._ There was a long moment of silence while Gotou and Masayoshi looked at each, then each opened their respective menus.

"He's still showing as logged in," Masayoshi reported, as if that fact wasn't plainly obvious. He tapped the 'call' button - and a red circle with a slash through it appeared. "I can't contact him either," Masayoshi said.

"What the hell," Gotou said. "His location is listed as 'unknown location.' What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

 _I don't know. Something strange is going on._

"You mean stranger than being trapped in a cheap video game?" Gotou said. Masayoshi threw him a glare.

"You want us to go to the Abyss, see if we can find out what's up?" Masayoshi asked, hesitating on the call list. "Look, Blue and Pink are available to call. And Pink's in Sanctum."

 _What?_ There was a pause, a long moment of shuffling. _I'll be damned. I'll see if can find her._

"So, the Abyss?" Masayoshi said, looking at Gotou.

 _What did Arbolu say?_

"Dead end," Gotou said. "He wouldn't talk to us."

 _Weird. Maybe I'll try, see if I can get anything from him. Lodas had no problems talking with me. Don't go to the Abyss, leader._

"Aww," Masayoshi said, glanced at his weapon.

 _We'll go as a group. It looks like Blue is in your zone, over by the research lab. Think you can dig him up?_

"We'll be stronger as team. We can at least handle that." Masayoshi glanced to Gotou, who nodded. "Let us know if you find Pink."

 _She's probably crafting. I'll start there._

"Yeah, and don't listen in on us when we're having private conversations," Gotou added. "You never know what you'll hear."

 _I already have enough material for several weeks of nightmares, I don't need your help for more,_ Green returned snarkily, and then clicked over to silence.

"Well," Gotou said. "So much for zombies, then."

* * *

They stepped off the path in Arbolu's haven, and walked into a gloomy mire. Masayoshi hesitated, halberd in hand, as Gotou continued down the path for a few strides. There was a shivering, hunched creature in the dying grass not far from them, and Masayoshi stared at it, chewing on his lower lip. Gotou half-turned and looked back and him, then saw where he was looking. "That's a zombie," Gotou said, and Masayoshi took several steps toward it.

"It's pitiful," he said.

"Masayoshi, leave it. We've gotta find Blue, right?" Gotou drew his sword anyway, just in case. "What are you going to do, anyway? Kill it?"

Masayoshi stopped walking. The grey creature lifted its head and stared at Masayoshi – still too far to consider attacking him – but its eyes and sallow face didn't even look human. The zombie shuffled forward on all fours, away from him, attention drifting elsewhere. Masayoshi shifted the grip on his weapon, then turned back toward Gotou. "You all right?" Gotou asked as he joined back with the path.

"Yeah," Masayoshi said, a strange queasiness settling in his gut that he couldn't quite explain. "…yeah. I'm fine. Let's go find Blue."

It was different, with the wind-spirits and the frillnecks … they were monsters, they were animals, they weren't… Masayoshi shifted his attention away and forward and was aware that Gotou kept looking back at him, concerned. He didn't say anything, though.

The longer they walked, the less marshy the ground became. The area was still dim and felt decayed, but not actively … now it just looked like a few good days of sun would settle things. Masayoshi looked into the heavy gray sky, overcast, and felt like the oppressive cloud cover would smother him.

They passed a group of creatures like the voice of Arbolu, gnarls, and they hissed and clicked at their passing. They stuck to the path though, and nothing attacked them there. Masayoshi stared at them a little too long, brow furrowed – and then Gotou yanked his arm and pulled him straight off the road and into the long grass. "Gotou-san-!" Masayoshi yelped, and Gotou yanked him into a crouch, using the scrub that lined the road as cover. "What are you-!"

Gotou covered his mouth. "Shut up," he hissed.

Masayoshi thought about how much more effective licking Gotou's palm was when he was bare-handed, and kept his tongue where it was supposed to be. He glanced back up at the road, through the scrubbrush – and saw two masked people saunter slowly up the road. "Lephartists," Gotou said, and Masayoshi remembered the robbers's guild from previous missions. "They're all around the research lab. We'll have to be careful."

* * *

Gotou sat down in the grass, and wondered for a moment if there was a potion or something that cured his poor, aching feet. Hiking around most the day through swamp and mire had worn him out properly, and they _still_ hadn't found Blue. Gotou exhaled, cracked his neck, and then leaned back, putting his weight on his hands as he sprawled. Masayoshi was standing on a white rock not far from him, staring out west, where the swamp slowly transitioned into dense, almost tropical forest.

He could hear the cries of wildlife, undoubtedly things to fight. Gotou sighed and shifted his weight slightly. "SIt down for a few, 'yoshi," he said. "Blue will respond when he responds."

Masayoshi had his halberd out - he was leaning on it, using it to support his weight. They'd had to beat a hasty retreat away from the research lab - even with the two of them, there were too many enemies, and the stealth stats on their chosen class was much lower than any of the other classes. "Maybe I _should_ have gone with assassin," Gotou said speculatively. "Sneak would be really useful right now."

 _"Gotou-san_ ," Masayoshi said, scandalized, half-turning to look back at him. Gotou sighed again, but it was with a smile on his face. "You have to uphold the ideals of _justice,_ and an assassin goes against that!"

"It's a class, Masayoshi," Gotou reminded him. He was a little grateful for the familiar response, if nothing else - Masayoshi had been acting a little funny for most of the day. "They just equip different weapons and have different skills, you _know_ that."

Masayoshi puffed out his cheeks, glanced back toward the expanse of forest as the general noise suddenly took a pitched turn of shrieks, pained and surprised before it faded back into the regular background hum. "What was _that_?"

"Player, probably." Gotou sat forward, leaned all the way forward, felt his back crack just a little. "Is it me or is the armor heavier today? I feel like I'm lugging around a full kit and I'm out of shape."

"I hadn't noticed," Masayoshi said idly, and Gotou remembered he wore lighter armor anyway, as a gladiator. "Probably isn't any heavier than my costume."

"Yeah, but you don't wear your costume all day every day," Gotou said.

"I would if I could!"

Gotou waved his hand in the air to dismiss the conversation. "Think Blue might have gone south? Or further west?"

"There isn't much further, according to the maps," Masayoshi said. "Just the forest, and the crab area." Masayoshi gestured, and this time an actual map appeared out of the air, in his hand. He blinked, a little startled by this, almost dropping his halberd. "Gotou-san!"

Gotou hauled himself to his feet. "What, what is it?"

Masayoshi thrust the map at him. "The MAP!"

Gotou stared at him blankly, then at the aged brown scroll in his hands - then back up to Masayoshi. "The map is ... a map, Masayoshi?" He wasn't entirely sure what the issue was with that, maps were _maps_.

Masayoshi stared at him, really _stared_. "Gotou-san, the map was a, a screen before! Like the chat function, remember?" He waved the map at Gotou. "And, and inventory!"

It was a strange feeling, the way the knowledge switched back on in his head. "Holy shit," Gotou said softly. "I'd completely forgotten." It wasn't even like it was something he'd managed to remember, it was like the information wasn't there, and then it _was_. "It felt like that was the way it was _supposed_ to be," he said, staring at the map in Masayoshi's hand, and back up to him, brow furrowed in concern.

"Like we're becoming part of the game," Masayoshi said, almost reverently.

"Don't say that," Gotou snapped. "Midorikawa will figure something out." The panic beat under his lungs again, things that he'd all but forgotten. Why was it only when he thought of reality that he craved the cigarettes, that he remembered the cell phone that sat at his elbow, that everything fell across his shoulders like a lead weight...? Gotou looked away from Masayoshi, out over the stretch of trees, the forest that sprawled away and down, and at the uniform white rocks that jutted at angles from the dirt.

That distracted him away from the other thoughts, the horrible ones - and he stared at the rocks, then at the one that he'd stepped up on beside Masayoshi.

Masayoshi was ignoring him, studying the map he now held in his hands, a look on his face of intense concentration. "Yeah, to the west is this forest - says manduri, on it but there's a bit up here that was scribble out or smudged, I can't-" he squinted at it, drew the scroll up to his face. "Can't quite make it out, says go-something, _nest_ \- figure it's the birds, if it's a nest. Further out than that is the Klaws."

Gotou slid down off the surface - this in particular wasn't far removed from the ground, the ones further away showed more surface, showed the curve and shape of them. Gotou pinged the finger of his gauntlet of of it. "Masayoshi," he said, interrupting Masayoshi mid-stream. "I think this is a bone."

There was a moment of silence. Masayoshi lowered the map he held in both hands, halberd held in the crook of his elbow, resting against his shoulder. "...what?" he said.

"It's a rib. Look at it, look at the others. It's a ribcage, the entire scooped out section of the earth down there, I bet that's all part of its ribcage." Gotou pointed along the row of white columns, and now that he was looking for it, saw matching ribs jutting from the dirt, mostly covered, across on the other side of the depressed ground. "Holy shit, this thing was _huge_."

Masayoshi vacated his perch atop the newly-revealed bone and stood beside Gotou now, map in one hand. "What do you think it was?" Masayoshi said, eyes big.

"I don't know, but it would give Godzilla a run for his money, if a single rib is big enough for _both_ of us to stand on." Gotou let out a low whistle, and edged to where the dirt and sod crumbled off before the drop to the hard-packed earth below. He crouched and looked - the trees overtook the bones, and leaned in toward each other, great large trees that were just oddly-colored enough to remind him that this wasn't earth. "I wanna see if there's a skull, somewhere around here," Gotou said.

"We should wait here," Masayoshi let the scroll snap back into its rolled form, and as he held it in his open palm it vanished, presumably back into his inventory. "We're a much lower level - while I think we'd manage it, why take the risk?" He was staring at Gotou, almost uncomfortably intense.

"Masayoshi," Gotou said. "Even if we get nuked, we'll respawn, remember? As much as I don't want to get the HP knocked out of me, it's not exactly a life-or-death situation here, you know?" He stood up and shrugged his shoulders, loosening them.

"What about what happened to Black?" Masayoshi asked him, and Gotou hesitated, glanced back over his shoulder. Masayoshi's intensity was dialed up again.

"We don't know what happened to Black. He's in Reshanta, remember? It's totally possible that he decided to check out an instance or something, and you can't chat out in those. Anyway, it's unlike you to be so reserved," Gotou said. "What happened to charging into the fray, huh? I kinda figured I'd be hanging on to your buttcape there to keep you from running headfirst into mobs above your skill level."

"It's not a buttcape," Masayoshi said indignantly, protective of his armor.

"It's a cape, and it covers your butt," Gotou said. "I'm going down there, you can wait up here if you want. Sitting here fretting isn't gonna help us find Blue _or_ Black any faster."

He felt Masayoshi's eyes on him as he jumped down, off the cliff's edge.

* * *

The crafting guilds made their home in Sanctum, the core capital of the 'light side' of the world. Green stood outside the massive hall - players streamed in an out, dressed in a wide variety of gaudy outfits, from armor to swimwear to servant's uniforms. It was a cacophonous arena, and while for most players all they needed to do was keep running forward because they'd phase right through another player standing immobile in their way, it wasn't quite true for Green. After the fourth time of having another player run headlong into him and backpedal, stunned, he decided it was best to go the long way around, as it held the least impacts.

There were half a dozen studios laid out in the main hall of the crafting guilds - the steady clangor of a smithy pounding hot ore against an anvil as apprentices worked on armor almost deafened him when he stepped into the wrong studio.

He found the tailor not far from the smithy - the room looked different from when he checked out guilds in the game, debating if it was worth the time investment to craft his own consumable goods or if he would rely on the broker and quest rewards. He had opted for the former, mastering his craft at alchemy to creation potions and potent magical weapons - but the studios all looked the same, before. Crafting tables and vendors to purchase items needed.

Now, the tailoring studio looked entirely different. Large machines and presses, and long tables to set up at and work on handicrafting. There were only a few players around, and fortunately one of them was exactly who he was looking for. "Momoi-san," Green said formally, unable to miss her hot-pink ensemble.

Pink held up one finger delicately, and did not look up from her work, counting tiny stitches in soft fabric. Finally, after an interminable amount of time she stabbed the fabric, and looked up at Green, brown furrowed. " _What?_ " she asked, clearly annoyed.

Green folded his arms into the sleeves of his robe. "Are you in the game, Momoi-san?" he asked, and she looked down at her handiwork, then up at Green as if he had grown a second head.

"Am I ... are you stupid?"

He blinked. That was not the response he predicted her to have, even if she had been exactly where he expected to find her. "I feel that response is uncalled for," he said, as Pink patted out the fabric in front of her.

Pink smoothed her hands over it. "What do you think?" she said. "I've been working on it all day. Once I've got it sewn up I can enchant it over armor, to give it the attributes of armor without any of the ugly, clunky bits." She grinned sharply, and as she smoothed it out further Green could see she was working on a kimono.

"It's ... nice," he said, slightly distracted. He'd never once bothered with how the armor looked, more concerned with its stats.

"I've been here most of the day," Pink said, plucking her needle out of the fabric. "There's some magic about this, because this isn't how you sew _or_ craft a kimono, but it's coming right along so I'm not complaining."

"You are in the game," Green said.

"Yes, dumbfuck," she said casually. "Now go away, I'm working."

"I'm adding you to group chat," Green said, taking a large step backwards. "All of us who are here, then, including leader and his friend..."

Pink's head shot up. "Leader's boyfriend is here too? Oh, I bet he's pissed." She looked forlorn for a moment. "Imagine if we convinced dearest to join too, then that she-bitch wouldn't be here and I could have him all to _myself_."

Green sighed. "We all need to get together, at some point, figure this out," he said. "I've been researching-"

"Whatever, you're talking again, I don't care." Pink looked back down at her work, and Green turned toward the door. "The NPCs acting funny - you've noticed that too, right?"

"Yeah," Green said.

"Don't trust them," Pink said, and didn't lift her head again.

* * *

Masayoshi stood in the grass and watched Gotou glide away, white wings unfurled. The sky was overcast here still, the gloom of the mire seeping in to the tropical forest, and it seemed to almost threaten rain with the humidity in the air. He gripped his halberd tightly and made to follow.

Gotou hadn't remembered the map function until Masayoshi reminded him of it. He'd out-and-out _forgotten_ it, like it had never existed for him. That thought scared him, more than anything - integrating into the game wasn't so bad, but what if that meant disappearing into their characters? What if it meant Gotou forgot about him, or he forgot about Gotou or the Flamengers or ... even _worse_ , forgot about his life's calling, the pursuit of justice...?

Gliding here was different than when he did it sitting at a computer, and because he was entirely too lost in thought Masayoshi managed to slam halberd-first into a low-hanging tree branch. It caught and he hung suspended for a moment, wings flapping frantically, as he tried to backpedal and free himself.

"You're a moron," Gotou called from the relative safety of the ground, hands cupped around his mouth.

Masayoshi struggled himself free and coasted down, circling Gotou and aiming a kick at his head (that missed, because he was way off and not because Gotou had better reflexes) as he passed. "You could have _helped_ ," Masayoshi said, once his feet were on terra firma once again.

"Yeah," Gotou said, "except I can't take off from here. Can't fly, can only glide."

"That's just a game mechanic, I can-" Masayoshi tried to bring out his wings again and flap, but all he achieved was a meter off the ground. "-the hell?"

"Must not be enough aether in the air to sustain the flight ability," Gotou said, and patted Masayoshi's arm. "Just enough to coast."

"That is _ridiculously_ unscientific, Green would have a field day with you."

Gotou shrugged. He pointed to the canopy though, now high above their heads. "It's a lot more open in here than I thought, looking down on it from out there."

Masayoshi nodded. He could hear the soft trilling cry of _something_ , and didn't like that he couldn't see it. If the map function had gone ... what of their enemy alert? "Loads of room to move around and avoid enemies, too," Gotou continued, already walking forward, hand on the pommel of his sword. "Though the uneven ground makes things a bit interesting."

He paused, and glanced back at Masayoshi. "So, with the map being a real, physical thing now I guess it isn't possible to locate Blue on it."

Masayoshi shook his head, he had tried when he was standing on the rib earlier. "Last bit of info I saw put him somewhere between the Manduri Forest and the research labs," he said.

"That's a _lot_ of ground to cover," Gotou said. "I have an idea." He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, as loud as he could. " _Red Axe sucks!"_

"HEY!" Masayoshi said, scandalized. "Master does _not-_ "

There was a faint, enraged shout. "He's in shouting distance," Gotou said cheerfully. "That's better than what we knew before, right?"

"I don't like this plan," Masayoshi said.

"Didn't say you had to _believe_ it," Gotou said, and slapped Masayoshi's arm. He frowned up at Masayoshi for a second, and then huffed out a sigh and pointed forward. "The hills frame us, so we gotta go forward anyway. You're an actor, and you're taller than I am, so your voice will carry better, you shout it."

Masayoshi gaped at him. "I will _not-_ "

"Just pretend Blue's, dunno, brainwashed or something and you have to lure Blue into a trap by saying things that you _know_ are untrue in order to save him." Gotou gestured grandly.

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said. "You're full of shit."

Gotou blinked at him, then grinned and smacked him again. "C'mon, we gotta find Blue, right? I still wanna see if there's a skull around here, I wanna know what this fucker _looked_ like."

* * *

They found Blue - and the skull that Gotou had been looking for - in approximately the same location. The skull was enormous, on its side and half-buried in the ground, its jaw unhinged and open. "You could drive a car through this thing's eye socket," Gotou said, standing inside the skull and staring up through the empty socket. "You could drive a city _bus_ through this thing."

Blue was actually sitting on one of teeth, feet dangling. "Leader," Blue said, disappointment in his voice. "Master does _not_ suck."

"What the fuck even _gets_ this big?" Gotou said, amazed. "Like, what's the value? This is bigger than a fucking dinosaur, I'm calling it. Godzilla is real and he comes from a fucking video game."

Masayoshi ignored Gotou, halberd planted in the dirt. "You've changed classes," he said to Blue, observing his lighter, leather armor.

"Yeah, I went with ranger this time." Blue said. He glowered at Masayoshi for a moment, then grinned. "You pulled off the gladiator thing better, anyway, I don't know _why_ , I've been playing this game longer than you."

Masayoshi scratched his head sheepishly. "Listen, stupid question time, but-"

"Hey," Gotou said, coming up next to Blue and smacking him hard in the back with one hand. "You feel that?"

The force of the smack made Blue lunge forward, slide off the tooth and land on his feet. "What the hell?" he yelped, half turning and assuming a fighting stance, fists up.

"No need for a stupid question then," Gotou said, leaning his hip against the tooth and setting his hand down on it. "You're here too, right Aoshima?"

"You didn't have to _whap_ me, I think I actually took damage from that!"

Gotou shrugged loosely, grinned at Masayoshi who was looking at him disapprovingly. "Hey, don't scowl at me," Gotou said. "He's fine, now you've got everyone all accounted for and we _still_ don't know what the fucks' going on."

"Everyone?" Blue straightened, looked to Masayoshi. "The whole team's in here?"

Masayoshi nodded his head. "Green is in Sanctum, trying to figure out why we're trapped in this game - he said he saw Pink there. Black is ... well, he's in the game, he went to Reshanta and suddenly he's non-communicative."

Blue tapped his mouth with one finger. "The Abyss is a pvp zone, I wonder if he got ganked."

"Even if he did, he'd respawn," Gotou said. "That shouldn't knock him out of our group, or the group chat." He pushed up off the tooth, looked at the person-side row of teeth, all filed down to points as they arced up over their head, and down along the rest of the jaw until they vanished in the dirt. Then he glanced over to Masayoshi, who was deep in thought. "So," he said finally. "Any ideas?"

Masayoshi chewed on his lip, considering. "We can still get those essences, take them to Arbolu, see what he has to say," he said finally. "I want to go look for Black, but if we go, we should _all_ go, because ..." he shrugged. "What if whatever happened to Black, happens again? We don't know what's happening here, really."

"Okay," Blue said. "I'll go along with whatever Leader says, I just wanna turn in my quests first, get the points for those. I'm close to leveling. We can fly back to Arbolu from the campsite, here in the forest."

Gotou sighed loudly, and Masayoshi laughed. "Lead the way," he said to Blue. "We've not been through here, before."

"The campsite's not hard to find, it's on the map." Blue made a gesture familiar to the both of them, and then his mouth opened in surprise when the aged brown scroll appeared in the air and feel into his palm. "What-"

"Yeah, we discovered that already," Gotou said, and patted Blue on the shoulder. "So, lead the way?"

* * *

Somewhere, in the depths of the Abyss, Black woke up.

He didn't respawn - he'd done that many times the first few hours here, figuring out what the heck had happened and where he was, testing the limits of the world; he was familiar with the blanked-out sensation, the ethereal feeling of coming together, existing again, awakening under the winged obelisk - this was different.

He sat up slowly, rubbed a hand over his face. Still his avatar, long dark hair swept into a single ponytail worn high on his head, female form - he reached for his weapons, but of course they were gone. He looked up along the wall, cracked stone, solid to the ceiling. Solid walls on three sides, unbroken except for a single slit high near the ceiling, far above Black's head. The fourth side was open, unmarred - and if the wall of the hall opposite his cell didn't flicker slightly, wavering, he would assume open and unguarded. He got carefully to his feet, reached out a hand and jerked it back sharply when he felt the solid shock of a most-invisible field.

Black took a step back and gestured, moving to open his support menu.

Nothing happened.

He blinked, and tried again - nothing. Brow furrowed, Black let his arm drop, and looked back around at the cell walls. He stepped to one blank, bare well, put his bare hand against the stone and felt it, cool to the touch. As he put his other palm to the wall, he saw movement and glanced toward the open side of the cell. Two Balaur - large, reptilian beasts wearing a mismatch of jagged armor - were walking idly past, on a patrol. Black stepped away from the wall, and his movement caused one to glance at him, but it was an idle glance, empty - it did not _see_ Black.

It was the look of an NPC. Black walked to the energy-field that served as a barrier, as close as he dared to get, and they did not look at him again. He watched them walk the same slow, shuffling pace, along the curve of the brig's wall. None of this made any sense to him at all - he had been set upon by the enemy race, the Asmodae; those were actual players, not NPCs. There were three of them, he held his own but got overwhelmed - but he didn't die, and didn't respawn. His memories just ... stopped.

"Hey!" Black called impulsively, his voice echoing down the corridor. "Ugly!"

Neither Balaur acknowledged him, or turned to look at him. They continued at the same meandering pace out of sight. Black exhaled through his teeth. _Definitely_ NPCs.

However, his experiment provided a different result than he was expecting. "Hey!" another voice called, not far away, but still out of his sight. "Hey, are you real? Are you a player?"

Black got as close to the energy field as he dared, turning his head, but he couldn't see much of anything. "I am. Are you?" he called back.

"Yeah! I just woke up in here, what the hell!" There was a moment of silence, and then the female voice called back to him. "Are you really, real though? Are you really _here_?"

Black's heart sank. There was no chance that this was Pink, so this was the first person that any of them had encountered within the game that wasn't affiliated with them being drawn into this. "I am," he said.

The silence following his response was lengthy, and for a moment he was afraid that something had happened to the other player. "I'm glad," he heard her voice, soft for a moment. "We're not alone."

* * *

"I've decided," Masayoshi said, sitting next to a root almost as big as he was. "I'm not entirely fond of monkeys."

Gotou was standing, a new sword in his hand, a weapon that the manduri had dropped as loot. "This is really nice," he said, a little awed. "Its stats are much better than my current sword, it's lighter, it has better balance -" Gotou shifted his stance and performed some kind of practice maneuver with the sword as Masayoshi watched, a little impressed at his dexterity. "We should kill more of them, see if we can get any other drops."

"They throw their own feces," Masayoshi said.

"You're just upset that you got hit," Gotou said. "At least it was just your pauldron, and it was easy enough to clean off. You could be Blue, he took it to the face."

Blue made a forlorn noise, standing in the waist-deep, still water collected into a small pond. He was scrubbing his face with both hands, bent down and ducking his head under the water, running his hands through his hair.

"Shouldn't you have gotten hit, shield-boy?" Blue called up wiping water from his face as he stepped up and out of the pond.

Gotou shrugged loosely. "Luck of the draw," he said, sheathing his new weapon. He glanced up through the dense canopy of tree limbs above them - while it was woven tightly together, every so often there'd be a break and he could see the sky beyond. "I think the sun is setting," he said. "I'm _famished_ , we haven't eaten since breakfast, and the transporters stop working after dark."

"Really?" Blue gathered up his armor and starting pulling it back on. "I haven't noticed ... but I think I've spent most of my time over in Oriel running around before I came over here."

 _Places shut down in the evening, like in the real world,_ Green's voice surprised them all.

"Hey, Green!" Blue said cheerfully.

"Glad to see chat at least still works," Gotou said, folding his arms and glancing at Masayoshi.

 _So what's the plan?_ Green asked. _I found Pink, I'm not going to be able to pry her out of the tailoring craft hall until she's done, but that's fine, we know where she is._ After a long beat, in which Gotou watched Masayoshi squirm, Green asked again, a little more terse, _or do we even HAVE a plan?_

"Leader will come up with something!" Blue said, and glanced to Masayoshi expectantly.

Masayoshi leaned back and closed his eyes, clearly thinking hard. "We'll all meet up in Sanctum," he said. "Tomorrow. Once the teleporters get running. Then we're going to the Abyss to find Black. _All_ of us," he added. "Once we've found Black safely, Green can get back to researching, and finding out if there _is_ a way to get us home."

Gotou nodded his head, looked over to Blue, saw that he was nodding too. "Sounds about as solid as anything else," he said. "Whatever Arbolu was on about can wait until after we've located Black too."

"Yeah," Masayoshi said. He rubbed his hand over his jaw. "Any objections?" he asked into the chat.

There were none.

* * *

"Once you've turned in your quests, we're headed to Oriel," Masayoshi said once Blue was fully dressed. "You're welcome to come with us, I have a studio."

Blue shrugged his shoulders. "I've got my own studio," he said, glancing between them, "I don't need a place to stay. I don't really need you escorting me either, Leader - I've been running about this territory both before and after I got into the game, I know my way around here and what I can and can't handle on my own."

"You say that after getting us soundly lost," Gotou said, arms still folded.

"It's a little different when you're actually _here_ versus running around from a third-point perspective," Blue defended himself. Gotou nodded his head, accepting that was a fair enough point and not pressing it. He walked over to the small pond.

"We'll cut out, then," Masayoshi said, then frowned. "Did it suddenly get very quiet?"

Both he and Blue raised their heads, looking at the canopy ceiling of the forest. The steady background chatter of creatures, both large and small, had tapered off dramatically. Gotou was ignoring them both, walking around the bond and tilting his head, seeing the glint of daylight off water further on, through a very large cleared space. He squinted at it and walked forward, as something in the distance seemed to shimmer. "Oh," Gotou said, remarkably calm.

"Hey, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, index finger held up. "It's something bad when everything stops making noise, right?"

Gotou's gaze had gone up, and up, and up - neck craned back. "Well," he said, as the enemy alert tone sounded. "At least _that_ still works." He threw a glance across the clearing at Masayoshi. "Guys? _Run._ " Without another word, Gotou turned, and _sprinted_ away, faster than Masayoshi had seen him move.

Masayoshi was on his feet, halberd in hand, as it came crashing through the trees. The enormous frillneck was a baby in comparison to the skeleton they'd seen, but it was still large enough to crush them in a single step. Its jaw was open and frill was down, and it was clearly chasing Gotou. "Holy _shit_ ," Blue yelled. Masayoshi's mouth sagged open in shock.

Blue's yell actually drew its attention, and it turned its gigantic head toward them. Masayoshi didn't even check to see if Blue followed him, he leaped over the root, halberd in hand and head down, as he ran as fast as he could away.


	5. Chapter 5

So, maybe running away blindly hadn't been the best plan, Gotou though, chest heaving in exhaustion. He stood knee-deep in putrid water, the carapaces of two very large clawed creatures lying behind him, loot ungathered. His HP was dangerously low, and he'd run right into a nest of crabs. _Klaws_ , he corrected himself internally, that annoying correcting sounding exactly like Masayoshi.

Once he'd stopped panting and sheathed his sword, slinging the shield over onto his back again, he looked around. Okay, so the giant fucking Godzilla-monster hadn't followed him this far, he'd either ditched it or it saw something else that made an easier snack. He could only hope that easier snack was not Masayoshi. Gotou exhaled, ran his hand down his face, and waved his hand, to attempt to bring up the chat program.

A big red circle with a line through it appeared briefly, and vanished.

Gotou looked up at the sky. Here the trees were sparser, the ground was soft and purplish, and frankly it smelled awful. Another mire of some kind; but at least he could see the sky. The sun hadn't quite set yet, but the sky was dark. "Shit," Gotou said out loud, as his stomach rumbled.

He was lost in the fucking woods, with creatures that were just high-level enough to give him difficulty, and he couldn't contact the rest of the group. Also, he was starving, and tired, and as much as he pretended otherwise frankly quite worried about Masayoshi.

First order of business then, was to try to find his way back to the campsite that Blue had been leading them toward, and hope that Masayoshi hadn't forgotten Gotou had no studio of his own and teleported back to Oriel, because then he'd be literally shit out of luck until the sun rose, and as awkward as sleeping in the same bed again after _last night_ was, it beat out 'sleeping in the jungle' by a million to one.

Gotou looked up as he heard another Klaw move, its feet clicking even in the soft earth, and he backpedaled in the water, feeling it slosh and feeling infinitely grateful it wasn't seeping into his sabatons yet. "What a time to get separated," Gotou said out loud, and several of the nearby Klaw looked up at his voice, but none turned to him, or made moves in his direction. Gotou half-turned, trying to figure out which way he had come in his desperate flight, then looked at the sky and wished he had a clearer view of it, although presuming the sun set in the West still had had a decent idea which way was north. Approximately.

Something in the distance twinkled, to the west. It caught his eye, and Gotou looked in that direction, squinting through the trees. There were ruins that direction, and also the end of the map ... although truth be told, they hadn't been to the edge of any of the maps per se, so he wasn't certain what happened when they ran out of zone.

Gotou glanced back to the east, hesitating a second. Masayoshi was with Blue, he _should_ be all right for a few minutes. Besides, what if this was something to do with their situation? It couldn't hurt to have a quick look. Decision made, Gotou started out at a quick jog in that direction, skirting the giant clawed crab-creatures to avoid needless conflict; his prior exhaustion melting away as if it had never been.

* * *

Masayoshi had run so hard he thought he was going to throw up. He stayed doubled-over, wheezing, palms of both hands on his greaves as he sucked air down his throat like a drowning swimmer.

Blue was sitting next to the resurrection obelisk in the small camp. Masayoshi had startled the hell out of the garrison outpost guards but they let him pass, mostly because he wasn't going to _stop_ no matter what they did, so here he was. Blue raised his hand in greeting, and Masayoshi walked over to the obelisk and dropped into the soft grass beside him. "Sorry you got smashed," Masayoshi said.

Blue shrugged. "That thing was fucking massive, and it was an ultimate. It one-hit killed me, there's nothing anyone could have done."

Masayoshi nodded. He put his palms on his ankles now, looked at his weapon that he had dropped in the grass almost without thinking about it, and looked up. "I lost Gotou-san," he said quietly.

"Call him in chat," Blue suggested, unworried.

Masayoshi's fingers curled under his palms. He'd already tried that, only to see that Gotou was faded out from group chat, that he was unreachable. The same way that Black was. The fear that twisted in Masayoshi's gut was so heavy he felt like he was going to throw up, again and again. Black's disappearance had him worried, he was in the Abyss though and on some level that comforted Masayoshi - but Gotou had vanished from their sight, and chat, in a regular zone. Masayoshi swallowed and stared down, not seeing what he was staring at.

"Leader?" Blue asked, already standing. There was a hint of concern to his voice, curiosity mostly, but just a bit of concern.

Masayoshi stood up. "I have to find Gotou-san," he said.

Blue nodded, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I'm gonna go turn into quests 'n stuff. See you in Sanctum?"

Masayoshi nodded blankly. He would have appreciated the company, but ... he wasn't about to ask for it. Masayoshi walked to the edge of the campsite, where it was surrounded by a crude wooden fence, where two armed guards stood eternal, sleepless watch.

"It's getting dark, traveler," one guard said without being addressed. "Stay the night, move on in the morning."

Masayoshi shook his head. "My friend's out there," he said.

The guard nodded in sympathy. "Then walk in Ariel's light," he offered. Masayoshi nodded his head, halberd in hand, as he started down the path, heading back for what was now clearly listed on the map in his pouch as _Gojira's Nest._

* * *

Black sat with his back to the cell wall and wished for a baseball to throw at the opposing wall. It would be something to pass the time. He'd taken to counting the cycles of the Balaur guard patrol. If he was keeping time correctly, the creatures shuffled by every quarter hour. Fifteen minutes was a long cycle for a loop, but they moved slowly, so their patrol area might not be as big as it could be.

He'd tried, on one cycle, to get a rise out of the Balaur as they passed, hurling every insult he could think of at the beasts and aside from one looking at his cell as they passed, there was no cognizant response. His new friend picked up the slack as they passed her, but they didn't flinch.

There had to be some way out of here. Black stared up at the ceiling, smooth, slightly reddish rock like the rest of the cell. While the walls and ceiling were cracked, they were still solid and whole. He stood and paced out his cell again, longer than it was deep, the energy field crackling angrily when he stepped too near. Black sprinted across the cell, put one foot on the wall and caught the edge of the small window effortlessly. It was too narrow for him to get through, he'd tried that already - hanging at the window by his hands he could see out, reddish darkness that told him he was still in the Abyss. Black sighed and dropped back down to his feet.

"Nice view, isn't it?"

He turned quickly on his heel.

There was someone new outside his cell. Black stared, then walked boldly to the open edge, where the energy crackled and fluctuated. Black looked the man up and down - he was in full body armor, some of the nicest gear that Black had seen in game. He also wore a full helm that concealed his true identity. "Let us go," Black said, and the man shook his head just slightly, which was more than enough to cause the helmet to scrap against the armor.

"I can't let such vital components run free," he said, hands folded and resting on the pommel of a great sword, its edges glowing red along the blade. "Without you, the rest of them won't come to _me_ ," he said illustratively.

Black said nothing, stared at him.

The armored man said nothing else, content to engage with Black via a stare-off. It was a long silence between them, but Black wasn't the one to break it. The armored man sighed heavily. "Always so _difficult_ ," he said. "You'll be in here a while, you should enjoy your rest more."

Black said, very calmly, very politely. "I'm going to get out of here, and I'm going to kill you."

The man tapped his helmet. "Very nice," he said. "Very effective, in a land where death is fleeting. Have fun with that." He flexed his hand, pulled his sword from where its point sat in the concrete, and sheathed it. "I enjoyed this, good talk," he said, and cast a wave at Black as he strode cheerfully out of sight.

* * *

Night fell in the jungle, but Gotou didn't notice.

The ruins were off the map. They were northwest of the Klaw's breeding grounds. It was a building carved directly into the cliff's face, made of sandstone. Several columns were shattered, and it had collapsed on that side, a landslide covering half of its entrance. Gotou wasn't entirely certain what had glittered about it, as the entire place was overgrown and looked as if it hadn't been touched in a hundred years. He stood at the base of the steps and looked up into what hadn't been collapsed by decades of obscurity.

There was something about this that felt strangely familiar to Gotou. He pulled his shield from his back before unsheathing his sword and taking a few cautious steps up the crumbled stairs. He didn't _like_ the crawling feeling up and down his spine, the vague sense of dread that circled in his belly ... but he wanted to get to the bottom of it, because he had the very strange feeling that if he didn't investigate, this chance would not come again.

The entrance was obscured by fallen tree branches. Gotou stepped over the lowest, ducked over the highest, and let his sword lead to catch the cobwebs that had built. The foyer that he stepped into was large and open, lit only by the dim light that streamed in behind him. The ceiling itself was lost into murky blackness ,but the hallway continued, dropping down and out of sight. Two passages to either side of him also dropped into all-consuming darkness. Gotou relaxed his stance, but kept his weapons up.

There was no way to go further without a source of light, and not being a sorcerer-class, he had no way to generate it. Gotou looked around at the debris, fallen tree limbs and leaves, dirt that had wandered in over the ages, and felt a brief ache of familiarity that he didn't understand or could place. This meant something, and he couldn't understand what it was.

A wind generated from the passage to his left, a breeze that howled through the rock face and blasted past him, bringing with it the odor of putrefaction. Gotou gagged, slightly, and took a few steps backward, stumbling back over a log that had likely been here longer than he'd been alive.

Gotou slung himself to his feet, staggered slightly, and climbed out the entrance, the way he had come in. There would be no exploring _these_ ruins tonight.

He'd only been in there a few short minutes, but already the outside world smelled fresh, even with the bog not far. Gotou seated himself on the crumbling stairs and looked at the sky. He could see the stars, from here.

* * *

It was the soft brush of lips across his own that woke him. Gotou struggled to consciousness, he'd been dreaming of _her_ , sunny-bright smile and infectious laugh; long hair turned golden by the summer sun ... and as he swam past that thought, he grabbed on to an arm and hauled himself half-upright.

Eyes open, vision not cloudy, Masayoshi's face. Gotou sighed out a noise of exasperation, hand still tight on Masayoshi's arm. "Didn't mean to fall asleep," he said gruffly, choosing not to remember what had brought him to wakefulness.

Masayoshi's face was entirely too close, tawny hair brown in the dim twilight. He was watching Gotou intently, then slowly reached his hand out, brushed it over Gotou's cheek and cupped his jaw. Gotou blinked at the tender move, didn't have the forethought to shove Masayoshi away as he brought their mouths together again.

Gotou's eyes widened, the grip on Masayoshi's arm tightened - his other hand flattened against the chest plate of Masayoshi's armor, he could push if he wanted to but he didn't, breath caught in his chest like a trapped balloon.

"Masayoshi," Gotou gasped when they finally broke apart, his lips bruised and jaw aching. Where had Masayoshi learned to kiss like _that?_ "Masayoshi-"

Masayoshi covered Gotou's eyes with one gauntleted hand, said in a soft, unfamiliar voice, "you're still dreaming," and kissed him again.

* * *

This time when Gotou opened his eyes, he was alone on the stone steps of the ruin. He scrambled upright, back and neck sore from the slumped position he had napped in, and he covered his mouth with one hand, blushing furiously despite being alone. _Fuck._

Where had _that_ come from?

* * *

Even with the wildlife that populated the Manduri forest being awake and active, it felt quieter now, at night. Masayoshi kept at the steady jog they'd traveled in, ignoring the way his stomach occasionally grumbled and how exhaustion pulled at him. He would try the chat, on occasion - the plaintive _Gotou-san, are you there?_ feeling echoed and lonely.

Eventually, Masayoshi came back around to the nest, now listed as _Gojira's Nest_ on his map. The frillnecks he ran into were few and far between now, after sunset. Masayoshi left his halberd on his back, kept his hands free as he moved quickly through the clearings that peppered the nest, created by the gigantic frillneck the game had unironicially tagged Gojira.

Masayoshi stopped beside a tree, put one palm on its trunk as he paused, breathing heavily. He was tired, logic dictated that he should go rest, Gotou would be fine - even if Masayoshi found him at a resurrection obelisk he'd be _fine_ \- but Black's uncommunicative status and his own nagging worry about what else was going on here would not let him rest until he found his friend.

Spreading to the west was the Klaw's territory, large crabs nesting and spawning ... the forest had been taken over there, transformed not quite into a bog but into something else entirely, the Klaw's encroaching habitat terraforming the existing forest, killing the trees and growing something in shades of violet, probably a fungus of some kind. There were more Klaws then usual, the opposite of the frillnecks, so Masayoshi moved carefully around their territory, eyes open wide, and still the occasional, tossed whisper into the group chat. _Gotou-san?_

Nothing.

Masayoshi paused again, along the well-worn path that numerous daevas had run down before, only this time he did conjure the map. When it fell into his hands Masayoshi immediately felt foolish, while night here was a lot lighter than in reality, it was still too dark to read ink on parchment. All the same he unrolled it, and stared in surprise at the map, where the letters and lines glowed faintly, just enough to be made out in the darkness. A smile quirked across his mouth as he glanced over the map. Klaw territory - where he was - slightly north of that was a small village symbol marked, but no name to go with it. There was a path between the Klawtan Wallow and the village, it faded out into the west but was otherwise unmarked. It seemed to glow, just a bit more than the rest of the map.

He squinted at it, certain it was just a trick of the light - and when he shifted position it seemed that the path's luminescence was no greater than the rest of the map's. All the same, it had caught his attention, and he may as well head that direction. Masayoshi rolled the map, and without thinking tucked it away. He'd keep on this trail until it diverged ... and if he was lucky, he would find Gotou at the end of it.

* * *

Gotou was still seated on the steps of the ruin when he saw the movement from the edge of the clearing. He shifted himself to his feet and stared out, but even at this distance it was easy enough to see that it was a player, and he smiled and tried not let the relief be evident in his voice as he waved. "Masayoshi! Over here!"

The figure had been running parallel to the cliff side, and the ruins - but it abruptly shifted and angled toward Gotou. Gotou's hand dropped like a stone, and he backpedaled furiously because the figure didn't slow down - and Gotou realized that while the build matched Masayoshi's, the dark, tattered armor and warhammer definitely did _not_.

He'd never had much by way of speed - templars just moved slower on principal, it was one of the stat sacrifices - and Gotou's head start was nonexistent. He had his sword unsheathed and in his hand, and the shield flipped off his back and onto his arm and the only thing he really had time to do was brace as the warhammer impacted with his shield with enough force that Gotou could almost see the HP drop off his health bar.

His attacker was wearing a full-face helmet - dark and gnarled like the rest of his armor, and his shape was just vaguely not human. Gotou didn't have enough time to assess much else, as he was more focused on not letting that hammer strike him in a vulnerable and squishy spot, like his _head._

"You know what?" Gotou said, as his sword slid off the bracers his attacker wore. "This is _bullshit."_ He backpedaled, and slammed into the wall of the ruins with both his shoulders, the impact hard enough that he lost more HP. He ducked and threw his shield up, directing the glancing blow of the warhammer into the stone behind him, and felt the spray of debris as the hammer damaged the wall. The attacker still did not speak, except for the occasional grunt of effort as he wielded what must be a ridiculously heavy weapon. "What's the matter?" Gotou grunted, thrusting his sword forward and feeling a mild thrill of success at the way his attacker leaped back. That must have stung. "Karnif's got your tongue?"

He pushed off the wall with his shoulders, back on his feet, and twirled the sword loosely in his hand as his attacker squared himself. He couldn't see their name, or level, like he could with monsters. "Don't you have a name?" Gotou said, bracing himself, one foot forward, eyes on his attacker.

Still nothing, didn't seem like he could taunt a response from this guy. Gotou brought both his elbows in toward himself, shield across his front, and focused - and to his surprise a buff appeared, a quick flash of white light enveloped him just as the attacker swung his hammer again, it collided with the light and bounced right back off. "All _right_ ," Gotou said, shifting his weight to his back foot and kicking, shoving his attacker back while he was already off balance. "I'll get the hang of this yet."

The player stumbled backward, his heel caught on some of the scattered debris from the ruin, and when he went to catch his balance he stepped back into space, missing the step and tumbling backward, landing in a sprawl at the base of the steps Gotou had been sitting on. The light from Gotou's buff faded, but that was all right, because he was getting the hang of this. Gotou advanced forward, shield still held tight to his front, eyes on his attacker.

He got to his feet, warhammer in one hand, and moved forward all at once, quicker than Gotou expected, and much faster than he could block this time. He took the full impact of the hammer on his left side, and it flung him sideways down the steps, a huge chunk of his HP dropping on contact. The armor took the brunt of the blow, even if his HP suffered for it, but Gotou rolled as the attacked struck at him with the hammer again, this time leaving a deep crater in the dirt.

Gotou had dropped his sword when he fell, it was now behind his attacker, who had his warhammer in both hands, advancing on Gotou still. Gotou scrambled to his feet, felt the adrenaline surge as he sucked air down into his lungs, and dropped his shoulders, putting more of himself behind his shield. He would have to charge, meet the attack head-on, and hope he could power through and around to get to his weapon if he stood _any_ chance of living through this.

He couldn't see his enemy's HP - he could see the damage he took, but no real idea of how much more it would take to fell him, or if every time they paused like this the attacker was taking advantage of potions and salves that he couldn't see. His one advantage was that the warhammer was a slow weapon, once he started striking he had to follow through, he couldn't change attacks or tasks mid-swing. It gave Gotou a very small opportunity, but it was one nonetheless.

The attacker wound up - his hammer started _glowing,_ red around the edges and down the leather that wrapped around its hammer, and Gotou realized suddenly if it hit him it was going to be all over, there was no way his shield would hold through a strike of that magnitude. "Shit," Gotou said, and braced himself.

The strike came from Gotou's right, the blast of energy tearing half through the ground and strong enough to knock them both off their feet. The attacker's skill was interrupted mid-stream, and Gotou was on his feet in an instant, dodging around the attacker and scooping up his sword, shield up as he turned in case the enemy was just as fast to regain his footing.

His enemy was quick, but the attacker faced the new threat coming toward him instead of Gotou. Gotou couldn't help the sharp grin that split his face. "Well," he said as he took a stance, shield up to cover him as Masayoshi swung his halberd hard, its blade glowing green with energy. "You're _fucked._ "

The impact of Masayoshi's weapon hitting the attacker's was enough to throw up a wall of energy, chunks of sod and rocks flying in every direction. Gotou heard them ping off his shield, and then he charged, shield first, bringing his sword around in a violent, sweeping motion.

The player had been prepared for one-on-one combat, but clearly not two-on-one. He tried to bolt, but Masayoshi's sweeping skill had magic attached to the halberd's blow, and it rooted the attacker. He tried to catch Gotou's sword on a swing, and that did it for the attacker's HP - he went stock-still, the color shooting out of his armor, before he faded out entirely.

Gotou stared at the ground where the attacker had vanished, as the roots that had trapped his feet retreated into the undisturbed segment of earth. His chest was heaving, he was shaking - he glanced up at Masayoshi, who was staring at the same section of the ground, his face clearly uncertain about what had just occurred. Gotou sheathed his sword, took several large steps over, shield still on his arm.

Masayoshi shook his head, saw Gotou, and his eyes got wide and then softened, relieved. "Gotou-san," he said - and Gotou put his hand on Masayoshi's chestplate, grabbed at the curve of it, and pulled him down. Masayoshi went with the tug, surprised - and his eyes widened again, just like that in shock, as Gotou kissed him.

It was over in an instant, and Gotou released Masayoshi, took a step back and looked back at the swath of destruction that still existed from the brief battle. "Took you long enough," he said to Masayoshi, who stood there stunned, touching his fingers to his lips.

* * *

Gotou had never been so glad to see an actual bed in a long time. He had half his armor off before Masayoshi had shooed off the Shugo butler, back to the station outside the studio, so that they could sleep in peace. Masayoshi hadn't said much, for better or worse, since they had reunited.

"Hey, 'yoshi?" Gotou said, leaning his shield and sword against the wall. "Earlier, in-game ... did you ever have a different armor set, maybe with a violet color scheme?"

Masayoshi hesitated, a sabaton in his hand as he took his boots off. "No," he said. "I got this armor a while ago, before then it was piecemeal since I only got armor as drops or rewards for quests."

Gotou shook his head, as if dispelling the fragment of a memory. "Why did you ask, Gotou-san?" Masayoshi was genuinely curious about this, something else to latch on to instead of the obvious, the thing he wanted to talk about most.

"Just a dream," Gotou said vaguely, down to thin shirt and shorts that he wore under his armor, that served as underwear here, in this game. He slid into the bed, flopping over to the side against the wall, and yawned.

Masayoshi walked to the bed, his armor shed now too, but he stood at its edge and looked at Gotou thoughtfully. "We don't have a lot of time to rest," Gotou said. "I want to get as much sleep as possible, and then we'll eat tomorrow before we go find the others."

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said softly.

Gotou rolled up onto his side, presenting Masayoshi with his shoulder, clearly done talking. "'Night, 'yoshi." He squeezed his eyes shut, as if Masayoshi could even see them from the angle he was standing at.

He felt the mattress bow as Masayoshi climbed into the bed as well. There was a moment of busy shuffling, then Masayoshi leaned over Gotou's side, and Gotou opened his eyes reflexively, looked up at Masayoshi in the dim natural lighting of the studio.

Masayoshi was smiling, soft and gentle. He brushed his hand over Gotou's head, ruffling his hair slightly. Gotou exhaled and closed his eyes again, as Masayoshi slid down into the bed beside him, presenting his back to Gotou. "Goodnight, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, and Gotou felt his face flush in the darkness, grateful at least that Masayoshi couldn't see _that._

* * *

"Hey," Blue said, kicking one of the bed posts. "You gonna sleep all day, or what?"

Masayoshi opened his eyes and squinted at the ceiling. The room's ambient lighting was much brighter now, definitely daylight - he rolled a little and looked to his left, to see Blue standing with his arms folded and looking impatient.

"That better not be Souichi," Gotou's voice came muffled from behind Masayoshi, face buried mostly in his pillow.

"How," Masayoshi said, sitting up and rubbing his hand over his face. He was a little uncomfortable, having a repeat of the problem he'd had yesterday, but thankfully the bed sheet tented as he sat up, and hid his issue. "How did you get in to my studio, Blue?"

Blue shrugged, hiked a thumb over his shoulder at the door. "You can, you know, _lock_ the door," he said. "There's an option to make your studio private, if you really want that."

"If I do that it kicks Gotou-san," Masayoshi said. He looked to the door and saw his Shugo butler peeking in, a scared look on his face.

"What _time_ is it?" Gotou still hadn't actually moved.

"Morning," Blue said. He kicked the bed post again cheerfully. "Rise and shine, we've got a whole new day of adventuring ahead of us!"

"I'm going to kill him," Gotou said philosophically.

"Don't do that," Masayoshi soothed without looking at Gotou. "It won't do any good, he'll just resurrect wherever he's bound."

"Yes, but that won't be _here_." Gotou lifted his head finally and glared at Blue. "I can take him."

Masayoshi nodded his head, still made no move to climb out of bed. "I know you can."

"Leader," Blue said. "That's not funny." He unfolded his arms, and put his hands on his hips this time.

"We'll meet you in Rockport," Masayoshi said. "Give us fifteen minutes."

"An hour," Gotou said, face back in the pillow. "At least an hour."

"Forty-five minutes," Masayoshi amended.

"Okay," Blue said with an exaggerated sigh. "But I'm not waiting on you to _eat_." His piece said, he half-turned and walked toward the door, where the Shugo was fearfully hiding. Masayoshi watched him exit, waited a few agonizing moments until he heard Blue's footsteps fade, and then glanced at the butler, who was still lingering in the doorway.

"Outside, please," Masayoshi said. The Shugo shuffled a moment, then nodded and scurried outside. Masayoshi sighed deeply. "The Shugo butler was terrified," he reported to Gotou, who may or may not have gone back to sleep.

"Well, he did kinda fail in his job of standing guard," Gotou said.

"Yeah, but," Masayoshi glanced back to the door. " _Really_ scared. Maybe Shugos are just skittish, but, I don't know..."

Gotou rolled over onto his side now, so that Masayoshi could see his face. He stared at Masayoshi with sleep-heavy dark eyes, and Masayoshi couldn't help the blush that started at his ears. "Why are you staring at me?" he asked, and Gotou propped his head on his hand.

"You're not getting out of bed because you have morning wood again," he observed, and the blush completed its journey across Masayoshi's face in record time.

"I, I _don't-_ " Masayoshi stuttered, then looked resolutely away, toward the other side of the single-room studio. "You kissed me," he said, studying very intently the pattern of boards that made up one wall.

There was no response from Gotou, and Masayoshi summed up his courage and looked back at him - Gotou was staring at the bed between them, blushing a bit himself. "Don't read anything into it," Gotou said heavily, refusing to look at Masayoshi. "It was the adrenaline, okay? It was a rush-"

Masayoshi shifted so he was facing Gotou, and the sudden movement made Gotou glance up at him in surprise. "Masayoshi," Gotou said as Masayoshi reached out and down, and Gotou didn't have enough time to react properly as Masayoshi's hand cupped the front of Gotou's underwear, felt him hard and warm. "What the _hell-_ " Gotou said, both of his hands out, pushing at Masayoshi's shoulders.

"You're hard, too," Masayoshi said triumphantly, and Gotou shoved him off finally, although it took both hands and one foot.

"Why did you-" Gotou yelled, face entirely pink now.

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, quite seriously. "Are you in love with me?"

"What!?" Gotou's yell turned into a screech, a bit high-pitched for him. He slapped one hand over his mouth and turned, refused to face Masayoshi, staring at the wall. "No, I'm not, you're a fucking _idiot_ -!"

"You're hard," Masayoshi said, softly though.

"It's a natural response, it's morning wood, and you fucking _touched it_ -" Gotou's shoulders slumped just slightly, he put his head in one hand and sighed deeply. "I'm not in love with you, Masayoshi," he said it firmly this time, with a bit of conviction behind it.

Masayoshi didn't realize how badly those words would sting, even with the unsaid qualifier dangling behind it. "But...?" he prompted, because it was the only thing that he could do at the moment.

Gotou let out a long sigh. "But you're _special_ to me, okay? You're my friend, and-"

"You don't kiss friends," Masayoshi accused, cutting him off. Gotou lifted his head, half-turned and looked at Masayoshi, a little angry.

"I told you, that was an _accident_ ," Gotou said. Masayoshi sat up on his knees, grabbed Gotou by the shoulder and pulled him toward Masayoshi, turning his head up to just the right angle and kissing him, hard.

Masayoshi's only experience with kissing was all due to his acting career, but that didn't matter, right now because this was Gotou, he smelled like Gotou, he tasted like Gotou - and this was a kiss that was real, that mattered - and Gotou didn't shove him away, curled his fingers in the thin fabric of Masayoshi's undershirt, and only then after a moment realized what he was doing and tried to shove Masayoshi away.

"Accident," Masayoshi said, their faces scant inches apart, both of them breathing hard, "huh?"

Gotou let out a loud noise of aggravation, grabbed Masayoshi by the shoulder and shoved, thumping him down into the bed with a surprised noise. Masayoshi tried to push up against Gotou's grip, he should be stronger with the size difference between them now but Gotou threw his leg over Masayoshi's stomach, leaned down and held Masayoshi's face still with both hands as they kissed again.

This was insane, Masayoshi thought giddily. He couldn't get enough of Gotou's mouth, hot and demanding, and the fact that he was straddling Masayoshi, right now - it may have been morning wood to _start_ , but now his body ached in a different way, and he very tentatively put his hands on Gotou's waist. He let out a low noise into Masayoshi's mouth, and Masayoshi responded in kind, slid his palm down Gotou's front and pressed it over his groin.

That brought Gotou back to earth. He jerked his head back, eyes wide - looked at Masayoshi, startled, like a skittish colt and Masayoshi wet his lips, looked at him pleadingly. "Please," Masayoshi said, voice hoarse, not really certain what it was that he wanted, but knew that he needed Gotou to say it was okay, to tell him to continue, to keep going...

Gotou shifted under Masayoshi's palm, closed his eyes. Then he shifted his weight back, and put his hand over the bulge in Masayoshi's underwear. Eyes still closed, biting his bruised lower lip, Gotou squeezed.

* * *

This was insane, Gotou thought dazedly, legs over Masayoshi's as they sat together in the tangle of sheets. Masayoshi's hand was bigger, it was wrapped around them both, pressing their straining erections together, slick with their combined fluid. He couldn't think much else, because Masayoshi kept kissing him, and between that, his head tilted back, Masayoshi's other hand cupping the back of his head, fingers tangled in his hair and the pure sensation of pleasure that threatened to overwhelm everything, Gotou could barely hold on.

"'yoshi," he said as Masayoshi drew back just a little, staring down at him - and his expression was hungry in a way Gotou had never seen before, and it sent a shiver down his spine, an anticipation of something else, something later. He felt it building now ,the pressure seated low, and he leaned back just a little as Masayoshi shifted his grip, squeezed hard, made it tighter. "Masayoshi," Gotou breathed, eyes squeezed shut. "Gonna, _gonna-_ "

"Me too," Masayoshi's head tilted in to his, he smelled of sweat and musk and Masayoshi, Masayoshi's teeth found his neck, he kissed Gotou there. "Me too, Gotou-san-"

 _Fuck_ , Gotou thought in that split-second of clarity before his orgasm hit. There wasn't going to be any backpedaling from _this._..

* * *

Blue sat in the tavern in Rockport Village, both hands around the flagon of steaming-something that he had received as a breakfast drink and blushing furiously, intensely red.

 _Someone_ was going to have to tell them that group chat recorded everything said, and it wasn't going to be _him._


	6. Chapter 6

Masayoshi stood in front of the cluster of Shugos in the main square of Rockport village, hands on his hips, halberd slung on his back as he listened to the overlapping chatter of answers he had received in response to a simple question. Gotou stood back a ways, right outside the tavern, steaming flagon of something that was labeled as coffee in one hand, hoping desperately that despite its strange taste there was something resembling caffeine in its contents.

Blue was _supposed_ to meet them in Rockport, but there'd been no sign of him when they got to the tavern. Gotou had been thankful, because he was certain the flush had yet to fade from his face, but Masayoshi was immediately concerned, especially given Black's disappearance. Gotou had to argue him down long enough to get him to eat something, but as soon as he'd cleared his plate he was up and talking to every NPC he could.

The cluster of Shugos - Black Cloud traders, Gotou guessed, based on their parcels and various wares - seemed to be the best source of information for the small town. They gesticulated wildly as they spoke, their high-pitched tones conflicting and overlapping. Masayoshi was nodding a lot, listening as thoughtfully as he could, and finally when he'd given up sorting them all out he trotted back over to Gotou. "Seems a daeva fitting Blue's description left via teleporter," Masayoshi reported as Gotou sipped his strangely-flavored coffee.

"Wonder why he won't respond via group chat?" Gotou said idly.

Masayoshi shrugged. "I tried pinging Green, too, but no one's home. We're supposed to meet up in Sanctum, though, so want to head there?"

"Might as well." Gotou drained the rest of his drink and ducked back into the tavern, to deposit the flagon next to their cleared plates, where a Shugo was already starting to clean behind them. Yesterday Masayoshi had tried to clean their dishes but the Shugo had actually gotten upset with them, so this time they left them without complaint. Masayoshi waited outside.

He kept doing this thing where he would _kind of_ glance at Gotou, then look away quickly, slightly pink. Gotou would call him out on it but it meant that he'd have to confront what had already happened today and damn it if he wasn't going to just pretend things were still normal for the moment. He wasn't dealing with it right now. Gotou ignored it, focused on ensuring his sword belt was buckled properly, and that he had enough gold in his pouch to cover the teleportation fee. "To Sanctum?" he said when he was outside, and Masayoshi looked at him finally and nodded.

The teleporter was the same slightly bitter one they'd spoken with the day before. He glanced at them casually, took their coins, and half muttered something under his breath as he opened the teleportation portal. Gotou ignored him, this time, and stepped through.

* * *

It was remarkable, what one got used to.

Gotou stepped out of the portal into a busy intersection. There was another teleportation specialist standing in the center of a long platform, but he was swarmed by people - players, jumping and shuffling around, each one stepping in to an opened teleportation corridor. Gotou shuffled forward when Masayoshi popped through behind him, and Masayoshi pushed Gotou with both his hands, moving him out of the way. Players might phase through each other as they ran about with no hint of consequence, but when they collided with those in-game, there was some confusion.

He'd been to Sanctum before, the headquarters and safe-haven of the entire race; but never like _this_. It was all white marble, rising high above them, shining gloriously in the morning sun. Wisps of clouds floated along among some of the taller edifices, and Gotou remembered as the wind blasted past him that Sanctum was actually suspended in the flow of aether, high above the earth.

He suddenly felt just a touch airsick.

Masayoshi didn't even seem to notice, the wind blowing his hair about. He jogged past the mob of players toward stairs that led into the city proper, and after a moment, Gotou followed him.

Sanctum was _busy_. Even past the entrance there were people - players - everywhere. Running back and forth on quests, errands, grouped together waiting to teleport somewhere, sitting on chairs with their own personal vendor stores open, just constant movement and chatter. It was in the strangest way reassuring. Gotou didn't linger, following Masayoshi's longer stride as he headed deep into the city, to where the library was.

There were not nearly as many people down in the plaza square. Gotou remembered it was usually reserved for event staff, when the game ran special prizes and rewards for players. He slowed along the railing, though, seeing a flash of violet that struck him as instantly, strangely familiar.

Gotou glanced forward, but had already lost Masayoshi to the crush of people. Gotou _knew_ where the library was, though - he'd catch up. He stopped at the railing, both hands firmly on its delicate metal sculpting, and vaulted over it.

It was a drop down to the next level, a significant one - but not enough to do damage. It wasn't the sort of jump that Gotou would have attempted in reality, but that person, in the violet armor was heading out of the plaza in the other direction. Gotou wasn't entirely certain what compelled him to follow, to see, but the armor seemed out of place among the shining, clean colors of the other players - it almost looked like the armor that came from Asmodae, their enemies.

 _It reminded him of the PVPer._

Gotou almost lost them in the crowd that had gathered in front of the resurrection obelisk - it was where people teleported in via scroll, if they didn't use an actual teleportation specialist. The armor-clad person ducked down a small alley between a great hall and a specialty shop, and Gotou, without hesitation, followed.

* * *

Masayoshi had been chattering happily to himself, unaware that he'd lost Gotou on the other side of the city. The library was situated at the far end of the city, in a largely protected area. Masayoshi jogged down the steps, looking at the array of long benches scholars used to spread out on, and saw Blue, standing near the end of one. "Blue!" he called cheerfully. "Green! Arieluma!"

"You've gone native," Pink's voice said from behind him, and Masayoshi jumped a little and turned, smiling blindly.

"Pink!"

She wore a glimmering pink kimono, altered so that it was enchanted over proper armor. She glanced up at him, then patted his elbow with a sharkish grin. "Have a good morning so far?"

Masayoshi blushed a little, but nodded his head. When he glanced over to Blue, and Green - Blue very obviously Would Not Meet His Gaze, and Masayoshi frowned and looked at Green.

Green said, from his seat, "next time, please exit the group chat if you need ... personal time."

It took a long moment for it to sink in, but when it did Masayoshi turned a deeper red than his costume. He almost choked on air. "I'M SORRY," he shouted, taking a step back, half-turned to share this horrified embarrassment with Gotou.

Who was not behind him.

Masayoshi's mortification paused mid-flail - he heard Green get up as he turned back around, as if Gotou had snuck around him as he was standing at the bottom of the steps. "Where is your boyfriend?" Pink asked, and Masayoshi looked back up the steps.

"He was right behind me," he said.

* * *

The alley didn't go anywhere - it dead-ended into another building. Gotou slowed from his trot to stop a reasonable distance from the player in the purple armor. He'd realized, as he'd followed, that this person took the same steps that he did to avoid being run into by other players, not just running about blindly. This wasn't a PVP zone, there should be no enemies here - all the same he kept his hand on the hilt of his sword.

He didn't say anything - but the other player leaned forward slightly, pulling off the helmet they wore. Their armor was black and purple, veins of glowing energy shifting between pieces, the large two-handed sword they wore at their back wreathed in the same kind of energy. When they straightened, familiar, tawny hair sprang free - and Gotou took a step back in surprise before bracing himself, staring.

Masayoshi's face looked back at him, the smile he wore more wicked than not. "Took you long enough," he said, in an unfamiliar voice. "Gotou- _san._ "

* * *

"Masayoshi...?" Gotou said, voice uncertain. He'd taken a step back because no, this could _not_ be, it really wasn't possible - but this person had the same countenance, the same hair, the same blue eyes... But the rest was all wrong. There was no light in those eyes, the way his mouth curled into something that might be described as a grin, and the way he _looked_ at Gotou, head cocked, arms folded, sizing him up like a piece of meat.

"You're not wrong," this other person, this not-Masayoshi said, and shrugged his shoulders loosely. "For some reason, I'd imagined you taller."

"This isn't - I'm taller outside the game," Gotou said. He closed his hand on the hilt of his sword, prepared to pull it from its sheath but it wouldn't come free. Not-Masayoshi watched him struggle with his caught weapon, a slightly-bored expression on his face. "You're not Masayoshi - who _are_ you?"

Not-Masayoshi's mouth quirked. "Again, you're not wrong," he murmured, and for a moment he sounded just like Masayoshi. Then he unfolded his arms, straightening to his full height, bolstered by the dark, wicked armor he wore.

Gotou gave up trying to free his sword, whatever was going on it was stuck firmly in its sheath. "You're behind all this," he said, hands curled into fists at his sides, glaring up at this stranger who wore Masayoshi's face. It wasn't a question when he said it, and this player-not-player shrugged again loosely, hands spread, palms up. "What do you _want_ with us? Why are you doing this?"

He stepped forward abruptly, closer to Gotou - and Gotou took a step back without thinking. Not-Masayoshi waved his hand in the air suddenly, and the air glowed green about it - Gotou recognized a spell being cast in an instant and backpedaled, unable to even pull his shield off of his back in time.

The vine appeared from the solid stone wall to his right, shot out and wrapped around his wrist, yanking Gotou from the middle of the alley into the wall hard enough that he felt the pain of impact shoot up his arm and down his shoulder. He grunted, put his left palm on the stone to try to wrench himself free but then felt the not-Masayoshi put his hand on Gotou's shoulder and thump him solidly into the wall, the shield on his back scraping against the stonework unpleasantly.

"I'm going to take everything that my brother has," the not-Masayoshi said, hand still on Gotou's opposite shoulder, holding him back against the wall with more pressure than Gotou thought possible, trying to wrench himself free. He twisted his head away even as not-Masayoshi caught his jaw and turned his head so that he faced this not-Masayoshi. "I'm going to destroy him, piece by piece until there's nothing of him left. _That's_ what I'm going to do."

Gotou clenched his jaw, tried to twist his head free again. "But then," this not-Masayoshi said, cold metal of his gauntlet-covered thumb rubbing Gotou's chin. "There's _you._ Haven't decided what to do with _you_ , yet, Gotou-san. Maybe I'll keep you for myself, I think that would hurt him the most, don't you?"

"I don't know who you are, but you're crazy," Gotou said through gritted teeth, straining against the vine that bound his wrist, the pressure of the hand that kept him pinned to the wall. The not-Masayoshi grinned a little at that, jerked his chin up, and kissed him.

The response was immediate. Gotou braced his back against the wall, easy enough with the pressure of not-Masayoshi's hand on his shoulder, and he planted both feet in approximately the area of not-Masayoshi's solar plexus. All the breath left the guy in a low moan, the sheer force of the move pushed him back away, staggering into the opposite wall of the alley.

Gotou dropped down against the wall, landing awkwardly, his wrist still captured by the vine and wrenching his right arm so hard it almost popped his shoulder. _"Fuck,_ " not-Masayoshi spat, pushing himself off the wall, freeing an enormous two-handed sword from its position slung over his shoulder. "For _that_ I'm going to cut your head off."

Gotou spat on the ground between them. "Anything to get _that_ taste out of my mouth," he hissed. He couldn't draw his sword left-handed even if he wanted to, his arm wasn't long enough to free it from its sheath at the angle he wore it at.

Abruptly, not-Masayoshi raised his head. He looked at something that Gotou couldn't see - above his head, through the stone wall. The man offered another snarled oath and raised his hand - and instantly teleported away. The moment he faded out of existence, so did the spell that held the vine, and Gotou dropped completely onto his ass on the cold stone ground. He let his arm drop down, left hand going to his shoulder, even if he couldn't feel it through the paldrons, and tilted his head back against the wall, eyes closed.

 _What_ the _fuck._

* * *

Black lay on his back in the center of the floor of his small cell, arms folded behind his head. There was no creature comforts, no hay to lie on, nothing even resembling a chair, so he made do. The ceiling was made of the same material as the walls, solid with no seams - not that he could reach those seams if there were any.

Well.

Black opened an eye and stared at the ceiling. He could _fly_ , they were in the Abyss, the aether was a constant here. He just hadn't bothered - he couldn't touch his inventory, his weapons were gone, there was really no need to exhaust himself flapping around a box.

Right on cue, on the quarter hour, came the Balaur NPCs. Black closed his eyes and sighed, probed for a moment for the group chat as he had fruitlessly many times in the last few days, and when that produced no results (not that he had expected it to) rolled up onto his side, so his back was toward the open side of the cell.

All he had was his clothing - light armor, leather and thin tempered metal, nothing really weaponizable there. If he was a heavier class, like the warrior classes who wore chain mail and plate armor he might have been able to _do_ something with that, but as it stood he was really, still, without options.

The only thing that left was for him to turn over in his head his short encounter with the person who held this fortress, a player - not an NPC - but they hadn't given him much, except that he was being used as some kind of bait. Clearly this entire ordeal was meant to trap up the Flamengers for some reason, but that didn't explain why other players got swept up into the madness, like his fellow captive, or Leader's friend, Gotou-k...

Black opened his eyes, stared at the wall. Then he got up and walked to the wall that he knew he shared with the other female prisoner. He slapped his open hand against the wall, it barely made a noise. "Hey!" he called, and knocked on the wall with his fist. "Hey, do you know Hazama Masayoshi?"

There was a silence so long Black was afraid that maybe she was gone, that the Balaur or the other player had come to get her while Black was dozing thoughtfully, but then she responded finally, her voice clearly confused. "Yeah, I know Hazama-san," she said carefully.

"I mean, actually know him, not just know about him," Black said. He thought a moment, her name was what, Ruby? He opened his mouth to speak but snapped it shut again when he heard her smack the wall.

"Are you _serious?_ What does this have to do with Samumenco? He doesn't even _play_ -" another smack into the wall, hard enough that Black thought he felt it with his own hand on the wall. " _Fuck_ , is he playing this game now?"

"You _do_ know him?"

"I'm Flamenco Ruby, that's why my user name is Ruby-" this time it sounded like she kicked the wall. "Mother _fucker_ , that explains everything."

"Almost everything," Black murmured, his hand on the wall still, closing his eyes.

"Now what?" Ruby asked, a voice without a face for Black.

Black inhaled deeply, eyes closed, thinking hard. He opened his eyes, looked at the ceiling - and smiled. "What class are you?"

* * *

It wasn't in the least bit reassuring to be among the players again. Gotou walked along the outside of a building, taking the long way so that he didn't get trampled by over-enthusiastic players and the occasional mount-riding asshole barreling down the middle of main street as if they hadn't a care in the world.

The moment Gotou had stepped out of the alley, he'd been blasted in one ear by Masayoshi in the group chat, wailing. _'ve lost Gotou-san agaaaaaain-!_

Instead of answering, or responding, Gotou glanced back at the alley he'd exited from, brow furrowed. He stepped back into it - silence, Masayoshi cut-off mid stream.

He smiled grimly, at least that answered _that._

Green noticed him back in the group chat a few minutes after he'd started walking slowly toward the library - which elicited another yell from Masayoshi that Gotou could imagine in all-caps, _STAY THERE I'M COMING TO YOU GOTOU-SAN._ Of course he didn't, but it was the main route toward the library, and he only had a few minutes to turn over what had happened in his head before he saw Masayoshi coming toward him full speed, armor glinting white and gold in the sunlight, the red highlights cheerfully accentuating it.

Gotou braced himself for a flying tackle, but Masayoshi drew up short in front of him, familiar blue eyes huge and watery, and Gotou said " _please_ tell me you're not going to cry, you didn't cry when you lost me in a fucking _jungle._ "

Masayoshi's expression wobbled for a moment then seemed to settle, he rubbed his hand over the bottom of his face and said, his voice trembling only slightly, "Gotou-san, what _happened?_ "

Gotou wet his lips, glanced at the bridge that spanned the two districts of Sanctum behind Masayoshi. "Is everyone else still at the library?" he asked instead of answering, and Masayoshi nodded. "This is important, and I only want to tell it once, okay? Let's go."

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, hesitation in his voice - Gotou looked up at him, and realized Masayoshi was waiting for something else, blushing faintly pink - and Gotou wet his lips and thought of the way not-Masayoshi had jerked his head, covered Gotou's mouth... Gotou looked away and didn't acknowledge that Masayoshi wanted a kiss, instead starting for the bridge. "Come on," he said without looking back at Masayoshi.

"Yeah," Masayoshi said, after another moment, and caught up to Gotou easily.

* * *

There were five of them now, in one place finally. They were arranged around the table Green had been camping out at - near the back of the main room of the library, away from the handful of NPCs who never seemed to leave, ever-present for quest checkpoints. Gotou opted to stand - he didn't want to take off his sword or shield to sit, felt the tiniest bit better with them still on him, even if he hadn't been able to take his sword from its sheath when he needed it just the weight of it was comfort enough.

"I know why Black can't talk to us," Gotou said, arms folded. Masayoshi had seated himself at the end of one of the long benches, closest to Gotou, almost territorial. He was watching Gotou closely, not the others, it was unnerving. Gotou ignored it though.

Green pushed his glasses up, settled them on his nose properly again. "It's because he's off the map," he said, and Gotou nodded his head. Whenever everyone looked to Green, Green shrugged loosely. "When you're a sprite made out of pixels, programmers design your world with edges. It's not truly three dimensional."

"Of course," Pink said idly, seated down the bench from Green, her hands folded in her lap. "That's why there are teleporters between zones, because they're just small maps areas with edges."

"They're not," Gotou said. "At least, not for us. I've been outside of the zone at least twice now, without any indication otherwise. The world just continues on beyond the artificial borders put in place by game designers." He tapped the side of his head. "It's when I fell out of chat. The game constructs can't exist in the real Atreia."

"Wait," Blue said. "You're saying this place is _real?_ "

"Well, we're _here_ ," Gotou said. "Aren't we?"

"But the game controls," Blue said. "The inventory, the teleporters, the _quests_ -" he gestured broadly, at the library behind himself. "The other _players._ "

"This is world wherein magic actually exists to begin with," Green said. "Technically, we're on the _inside_ of the planet's _crust_ , a feat which is a geophysical impossibility and yet..." He shrugged.

"So the mapped zones are where the game controls work - mostly," Masayoshi said, amending himself mid-sentence. "But the maps, the way our inventory is handled-"

"The longer we're here, the more part of its fabric we become," Gotou said. "If I had to guess."

"So, what do we do?" Pink asked.

"Finding Black is still at the top of the priority list," Masayoshi said, his elbow on the table, chin in hand and head still turned to Gotou. "That's not all though, is it, Gotou-san?"

Gotou rubbed his hand over the bottom of his face, considering. He was giving Masayoshi a thoughtful look - then shook his head and sighed. "We're here because of Masayoshi," he said finally. "I saw him - I think he's the guy who's caused all this, he's geared himself up and made an avatar that looks just like Masayoshi and everything." He sighed. "I don't know what his game is, but he's after you, 'yoshi."

Masayoshi had lifted his chin out of his hand, glancing back down the table at the other Flamengers. They were all looking at him - no one was surprised that Masayoshi was at the center of all this, but they were all looking at him for a different reason. "Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, looking back to him. "Did he have, like, a yellow collar around his neck, or maybe a tail...?"

"He was wearing a full set of Asmodian armor," Gotou said. "I couldn't tell you even if he did." He regarded Masayoshi curiously. " _Why?_ "

"But Beyond Flamenco is dead," Masayoshi said, not quite in answer to Gotou's question. He was staring off, at the rows of bookshelves that disappeared into shadow behind them with a furrowed brow.

"There's no reason to assume it's From Beyond," Green said. "They were thoroughly eradicated, the chances that it's actually them are so minuscule that they don't bear mentioning."

"Yeah," Blue said, a little too enthusiastically. "We kicked their asses!"

"Not necessarily that it's From Beyond," Masayoshi said. "Just Beyond Flamenco."

"I think it more likely it's someone who created an avatar that looks like you," Gotou said. "You saw Beyond Flamenco die, so did a lot of people. There are a lot of messed up people in the world, Masayoshi."

"But," Pink said, tapping her fingers on the table thoughtfully. "Why the deception, then? What's the point in wearing Leader's face?"

"You'll have to ask him about that," Gotou said.

"Whoever he is - whoever he _really_ is - he's up to no good," Masayoshi said. He folded his hands in front of his face as he thought hard. "We have to stop him."

"No _shit_ ," Gotou said. "The question is, _how._ "

"And what do we do with him after?" Pink said. "Since he's a player, he would just resurrect at an obelisk, even if we kill him."

"And it's not like we have the capacity to incarcerate him," Green said.

"So we capture him, and we take him to the Emperyean Lords," Masayoshi said. "They're the rulers in the game, right? They'll know what to do with him."

"They're NPCs, Masayoshi," Gotou said.

Masayoshi looked to Gotou, then to Green. "Are they?" he asked. "If this game is real, then _they_ are real, right? The teleportation kiosks close at dusk. We've seen NPCs close their stalls and move on. They're real. And that means the Emperyean Lords are real, and can deal with him."

"It's as good a start as any," Gotou said finally. "First, we have to find Black. Something's keeping him off the map, out of a zone, otherwise he clearly would have contacted us by now." He inclined his head at Masayoshi. "You have a plan, 'yoshi?"

Masayoshi looked down the table at Green. "Did you figure out where his last mapped location was?"

"Somewhere past the Eastern Shard of Lastran," Green said.

Blue leaned forward. "That's right by the Asmo fortress," he said. "I had quests over there and couldn't get them done without getting killed every time."

"Unlike you, Black is actually a competent player," Pink said, addressing Blue but keeping her attention on Green.

"Hey!" Blue said.

"So we're definitely headed to Reshanta, then," Gotou said. "Makes sense for a bad guy to hole up there, there are so many decimated, ruined fortresses from the Balaur invasion..." Gotou's thought trailed off. "Ruins," he said suddenly, and snapped his fingers. "That place I found off the map before," he said. "There were ruins there, they stank of sulfur and brimstone. It was too dark for me to explore then, but there's no reason they should smell like the Abyss."

Masayoshi cocked his head, looked back at Gotou. "I thought you'd never been to the Abyss, Gotou-san."

"I lied, Masayoshi." When Masayoshi's face fell, Gotou sighed and felt compelled to explain himself. "Couple of quests that took me Terminon, but I didn't leave off the platform, it hardly counts."

"He can do Abyss quests but not the studio quest," Blue commented idly.

"Shut _up_ , Blue," Gotou and Masayoshi said at the same time.

"You think the ruins might be tied in, somehow?" Green said, redirecting the flow of conversation.

"Could be. There are those portals that allow you to walk between zones, there's one from the Holy Shrine into Eltnen." Gotou folded his arms again. "Maybe there's one into Reshanta hidden in there - or even better, a direct line to old boy's hidden base."

"It's worth checking out," Green said after a moment. "Especially if it means we have to avoid trying to fly and hide that deep into enemy territory."

"But what if it's not?" Pink said. "We'll have wasted the day running around in the _jungle_ ," she put special emphasis on that word, "and poor Black will have to wait another day for our rescue."

Blue was staring at Pink with the strangest expression on his face. "Did you just express concern for someone who isn't Master?" he said.

"I think it's more concern about messing her newly enchanted armor," Masayoshi muttered. There was a small clang, metal reverberating against metal, and Pink made a disgusted noise.

"It's ineffective to kick people in plate armor," Green reminded her.

"Maybe we _should_ split up," Masayoshi said. "There are five of us. That way if this is a trap, not everyone gets caught up in it."

"Yeah, but with five of us," Blue said, "we're pretty much unstoppable. All the classes are accounted for -" he glanced to Pink. "I think."

"Leader's right," Green said. " _And_ Blue is right." He sighed. "You know how much it concerns me when _Blue_ is right about something."

"Even a stopped clock's right twice a day," Gotou murmured.

Green inclined his head to indicate that he'd heard Gotou. "I like our odds better as a group," he said, "but I think we'd get it resolved faster separating. If the ruins are a dead end, then we won't have wasted the rest of the day."

"Fair enough," Gotou said. "I know where the ruins are, I can check that out, and you four can go off and be-" he hadn't even finished his sentence when Masayoshi slapped his palms on the table and stood up, forcing the bench away and causing Blue to almost go over backward.

"You _can't_ go alone!" Masayoshi said loudly.

Gotou looked up at Masayoshi, arms still folded. "I'll be fine," he said coolly. "I have a feeling this is a Flamenger thing - despite it being centered around you - so you'd be better off with them."

"No," Masayoshi said.

"Masayoshi," Gotou started to say. He glanced to the other Flamengers - all of which were currently, very obviously, looking somewhere else. "Hey," he said sharply, but none of them even looked at him.

"To be fair," Blue commented without making eye contact. "It's like you're an honorary Flamenger anyway-"

"Don't _help_ ," Gotou said. To Masayoshi, he said, "it's pointless for both of us to go, we're both the same class anyway. If you let just the three of them go without a tank, they'll get slaughtered."

"Ex _cuse_ me," Pink said. "I can tank."

Both Gotou and Masayoshi looked at her. "You changed class again?" Masayoshi said, surprised - and Pink cupped her chin in her hand, watching them with a droll expression. "I'm a spiritmaster," she said, " _remember?_ My beasts do all the work for me."

"That's not the same as a tank," Gotou said, at the same time that Masayoshi said, "see? They'll be _fine._ "

Green clapped his hands lightly, drawing everyone's attention. "It's decided then," he said. "We three will head out to the Eastern Shard by way of Terminon, you two will check out to see if the ruins are a shortcut. If they are not, pop back into the zone as quick as possible to update us. We'll find the line of demarcation and stay there until we know what's going on."

"Sounds good," Masayoshi said. "Let's do it."

" _Hey_ ," Gotou said, as everyone else stood up.

"Oh," Pink said. "I completely forgot. Yellow-kun, if you two are going to have sex please remember to exit the group chat next time first, okay?" She gave a little wave.

"Do _not_ call me-" Gotou paused, a look of horror spreading over his face. "Wait, _what?_ " He looked to Masayoshi, turning pink. "Is she serious? Is she fucking-"

Masayoshi had stepped even closer to Gotou, his face serious in a way that Gotou almost didn't recognize. "I'm not going to let you use yourself as bait, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said quietly, firmly.

Gotou stared at Masayoshi for a long minute, and then he looked away.

* * *

They gathered by the teleportation kisk, on the other side of Sanctum. "I have extra flight speed scrolls," Green said as they organized themselves. "If anyone needs them."

"I don't think I've ever seen your wings," Blue said to Pink, who ignored him completely. He shrugged and looked at Gotou, who was quiet anyway. "Hey, Yellow-"

"Do _not_ ," Gotou said, "even _start_ that."

"He prefers Samurai Policeman," Masayoshi told Blue, and Gotou actually turned around and aimed a kick at Masayoshi. Masayoshi let the armor absorb the kick, like he had with pink, and it made a pathetic clanging noise.

"That was a _one-time_ thing! Once! To help you out!"

"See you in the Abyss, I hope, Leader," Green said, as a portal opened up. Blue and Pink followed after, moments later, leaving Gotou and Masayoshi on the platform with the teleporter.

"Reshanta as well?" the NPC - he had to stop thinking of them like that, and Gotou knew his name was Polyidus.

"No, Heiron," Gotou said.

"Safe travels," Polyidus said as he opened the portal. Gotou stepped through it, and didn't look back at Masayoshi.

* * *

"Are we still in the group chat?" Gotou asked Masayoshi as they stood in the main fortress in Heiron.

"Probably," Masayoshi said.

"Can we turn it off without exiting it?" Gotou asked.

Masayoshi gestured - and brought up his command menu. He tapped a few commands, and said, "you can mute it if you go to its main menu. Just got to remember to unmute it."

Gotou gestured in the same manner, to bring up his own console. He tapped the air and swiped a few times, then satisfied that his group chat was thoroughly muted, hand waved the command menu away. Masayoshi still had his open, studying his inventory - which was fortunate, because that meant he didn't see it coming when Gotou punched him.

Masayoshi flailed back, caught his heel on one of the many stone steps and clattered down onto them, landing hard, his halberd knocked off his back.

"Damn," Gotou said, and held his wrist with one hand, shaking his hand loosely. "That hurt more than I thought, even in armor."

"What," Masayoshi gasped, hand up over his nose, which was now bleeding. " _Why-_?"

"You should have gone with them," Gotou said, and dropped his arm to his side. "I'm supposed to do this alone."

"I'm not gon' _let_ you-" Masayoshi scrubbed his palm over his face, smearing the blood, but it had already slowed to a trickle, the HP points that Gotou had knocked off his bar already replenishing. "I won't let you sacrifice yourself-"

"Who the fuck said anything about me sacrificing myself?" Gotou yelled. A few players slowed their run past, but no one lingered or really paid much attention to them. Gotou glanced around, put his hands on his hips and exhaled. "Goddammit, Masayoshi."

"Why'd you _hit_ me," Masayoshi said, looking at the blood smeared on his palm. "You didn't _hafta_ -"

"You don't seem to have any sense in your head unless I actually knock it into you," Gotou said. He _had_ been planning to use himself as bait, to see if he could draw out this not-Masayoshi again, but _his_ Masayoshi didn't need to know that. "I can't believe you didn't think to have us mute our chats earlier." He held his hand out to Masayoshi, to assist in helping him to his feet.

After a moment, Masayoshi took it, and let Gotou help haul him upright.

"I forgot," he said, not making eye contact with Gotou for a moment. "You were a little ... distracting." Then he raised his head and frowned severely. "Don't hit me, Gotou-san. I don't hit you."

"Yeah," Gotou said, and looked at his hand. "Sorry. It still feels more like a game than not, I didn't expect you'd actually bleed. I won't do it again." He looked up at Masayoshi. "We need to figure this thing out, though."

Masayoshi nodded. "We'll find Black, and take Beyond Flamenco to the Emperyean Lords and let them deal with him-"

"Not that," Gotou said. " _This_..." he gestured aimlessly, seeming to indicate them both - then he sighed. "Us. We need to figure us out."

He looked up at Masayoshi, but Masayoshi was silent a long moment. Gotou was waiting for him to say, 'but what is there to figure out, Gotou-san?' but instead, Masayoshi surprised him by actually being reasonable. "Yeah," Masayoshi said. "We do." He rubbing his nose again and sniffed. "I do think," he said after another moment, "that I should get a kiss after you punching me like that."

Gotou smacking his arm, open-handed. "We'll talk after you've washed the blood off your face," he said. "Let's get going, we gotta head back to the jungle."

"No Godzilla-hunting this time, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said. Gotou laughed a little at that, as he walked up to the flight transporter.

"With all the monkeys around, do you think there's a King Kong?" he asked.

* * *

Terminon was bustling. "There's a siege about to happen," Green reported, pushing his glasses up his nose, the other hand in the air, scrolling through the LFG chat that they still seemed to have access too. "That's why it's so busy. I wonder if that will work in our favor."

"It'll distract the bad guys," Blue said, hands on his hips as he stood at the top of stairs that lead to the lower plaza. Pink had seated herself on the pedestal, legs crossed at the knee, one arm supporting her, the other in the air and scrolling through chat as well. "Most of them, anyway. We can handle the rest."

"I wonder," Pink mused. She gestured. "They're still in chat, I see. No response though - wonder if they muted us and went off to fuck."

Green pushed up his glasses again and said nothing, but Blue turned so quickly it was almost a flail. "How can you _say_ that about Leader, he's a professional!"

"Yes," Pink said without looking at Blue. "He's also been wanting to jump his boyfriend's bones for the last two months. Tell me, Souichi, are you blind or just dumb?"

"Hey!"

"Settle," Green said.

Blue turned back to Green, folding his arms and huffing. "What are we waiting around for? We can at least go to the edge of the mapped zone."

"Not until the siege starts, at least," Green said. "That will pull almost all the legions toward the disturbance, and probably most of the people running solo. It'll be a great distraction."

"Another tally mark for 'dumb'," Pink said, checking her finger in the air. She dropped both of her hands and tilted forward slightly, interlocking her fingers over her knee as she cocked her head and stared at Blue. "This is why you're still single, you know," she said. "You should really work on that."

"You should talk! You're single too!"

"Yes, but I'm waiting for Kaname-san to realize what a bitter old hag his wife is," she said sweetly.

Green let out a long, low sigh of aggravation, and checked the chat to see how much longer it would be until the siege began.

* * *

It had started raining, as they jogged along the path that wound through the forest. The gentle drizzle was distracting, but not enough to impede their progress. "You really think that this is the work of Beyond Flamenco," Gotou said. He didn't quite believe it - Masayoshi had been hesitant to talk about his mirror's existence, even after the defeat of Alien Flamenco, but one thing he was absolutely certain of was his double's death. "I don't think that's possible."

"You said it yourself, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said. "Why would anyone wear an avatar styled to look like me?" He had stopped on a ridge, taking shelter from the strengthening rain shower under the wide shadow of a branch and waiting for Gotou's to catch up.

"Do you want the list? It'll take a while." Gotou hauled up the ridge and stopped beside Masayoshi. For the first time he was starting to feel a little winded, as well as the weight of the plate armor he wore. He held up his hand, palm out, before Masayoshi leaped off the ridge to glide down the hills toward the Klawtan's hollow. "One minute," Gotou said, and then sat on the soft ground. He exhaled a little, and put his elbows on his knees. "You saw him die."

"There wasn't a body." Masayoshi was leaning on his halberd, using it as a support.

"You guys had a massive battle on Mount Fuji," Gotou said. "It was likely incinerated."

Masayoshi was looking out, down the slope of the hill. "Probably," he said softly. "But I think it's him, I don't know _why_ , I just do."

Gotou was silent for a long moment. He inhaled, exhaled - and then climbed to his feet, the short rest being enough to replenish him, if just for the moment. "Okay then," he said. "Your gut isn't the worst thing in the world for us to trust." Masayoshi glanced over to him and smiled, and Gotou smiled back. The rain dripped down from the canopy to the floor, moving from a soft rain to a deluge.

"I don't remember it raining like this in the game," Masayoshi said. They were mostly dry under the branch, but it was damp and cold. "Just drizzles."

"It's not a game anymore," Gotou said.

Masayoshi nodded his head, then gestured out with his halberd. "Wanna run for it, then?"

"Hell no, we'll give it ten minutes to ease up." Gotou sat back down, sinking slightly into the soft earth. After a moment of silence, Masayoshi joined him, sitting beside him on the ground, and they watched the rain together.

"Gotou-san?" Masayoshi asked, after the silence had gone on too long. Gotou sighed a little, leaned back on one hand. "Can I ask you a question?"

"I suppose so," Gotou said. As he watched Masayoshi gather his thoughts, he added, "don't make me regret saying yes."

Masayoshi looked over at him, brow furrowed and clearly deep in thought about how he should ask the one question he was being permitted. "Why haven't you ever ... said anything about what I asked you?"

Gotou cocked his head, listening to the rain around them. He furrowed his brow, thought hard - then looked over to Masayoshi in defeat. "You're going to have to be more specific," he said finally.

The ripple of emotion that crossed over Masayoshi's face was almost hysterical. He was on his feet in an instant, hands balled into fists, eyes wide and hair matted by the rain. " _Gotou-san_!" Masayoshi began, but Gotou held up one hand and he stopped, chest heaving.

"Is this," Gotou said, not looking at Masayoshi, but out into the jungle, dripping with rain. "About what you asked me bare-ass naked in your apartment like a freak?"

Some of the starch was taken out of Masayoshi by that. "That was to prove a point," he said. "To Sawada-san."

"I know." Gotou still didn't look over to him, felt the weight in his chest again. He looked away - from Masayoshi, out to the right. The sky was overcast, and the wind blowing from that direction was colder even than he expected.

"Gotou-san." Masayoshi was still standing, his stance a lot less combative, shoulders slumped slightly. "You said I could ask-"

"That didn't mean I'd answer."

He could sense the expression on Masayoshi's face, the coming quip about how that wasn't _fair_ , and he sighed deeply, felt the knot grow a little tighter. "That's not - I haven't said anything about it because what am I supposed to _say?_ " He glanced back over at Masayoshi finally, found his gaze unsettling and looked away again.

"You're supposed to say yes."

"That's not how it works," Gotou said. "That's not how _any_ of this is supposed to work. You understand that, right? We're not - I have my girlfriend, Masayoshi." He hadn't mentioned her in a while, and the word felt weird falling out of his mouth. Gotou wet his lips and, after a moment, stood.

When he looked over to Masayoshi, he saw disappointment in his eyes. Either at being rebuffed, or at the other thing, Gotou really didn't care. He ran his hand through his hair. "It's not going to let up," he said finally. "We should get going before it gets any worse."

"Yeah," Masayoshi said softly.

* * *

Black wasn't entirely certain what he expected to happen as he sat, legs folded underneath him, in the center of the cell. It wasn't for the air to get thick and heavy, suddenly, like soup - and then for the energy that kept him locked in his cell to fade out with a sharp, static sound.

He didn't hesitate to see what was happening. Black uncoiled in a smooth motion and dashed across the cell, leaping through the empty space and slamming bodily into the curved wall opposite his cell. He rolled onto his side and got up, looking back at the cell from the outside, but the barrier had yet to reestablish. The air had the same heavy quality to it.

As he got to his feet, a thud down the hall made him turn - and his limbs suddenly felt heavy, too heavy - it was a struggle to stay upright, but one palm on the wall kept him there. He moved slowly toward the cell that Ruby was in.

She was collapsed on the floor in the center of the cell, back to him - and what a fortunate occurrence that was, because Black stopped and stared in surprise. Her skin - what was revealed by the soft leather armor, dyed white and pink - was a deep shade of blue.

 _Asmodian._

The atmosphere seemed to thud again, grow even heavier for just a moment - and then like nothing had happened it cleared. Black stood up straight, it felt like the weight had been shed in an instant. Ruby stirred in the center of her cell, rolled forward and put her hands underneath her, pushing herself to a sitting position.

"Ruby!" Black said, and she turned to the wall, eyes wide, deep red hair cut short around her head.

She stared at him, equally as surprised. "Elyos," she said, eyes wide. "Wait - I can _understand_ you!"

He nodded, then stepped forward, put his hand through the cell where the barrier would be. "Hurry," he said.

"Got it." She rolled to her feet and moved forward quickly. And not a moment too soon, as she passed through the space where the barrier existed it reset, leaving a few ruffles of a ribbon she wore on her armor behind.

"What the hell," Ruby said. She stared at Black, and shook her head. "All this time, I was imagining you as Asmo," she said. "And ... a guy."

Black shrugged his shoulders loosely, not particularly bothered, either way. "Come on," he said, indicating the passage. "The Balaur who patrol should be along soon."

Ruby nodded her head sharply, and curled her bare hands into fists. "Let's find a way out of here - truce until this thing is over, right?"

Black nodded, and Ruby extended her hand, which Black looked at, surprised. "Flamenco Ruby," she said, referring to her username. "But you can call me Mizuki, or Ruby, I don't care."

"Flamen Black," Black introduced himself, and she stared at him.

"Flamen - you're a _Flamenger_ , of fucking course you are." She took her hand back and folded them across her chest. "That's how you know Hazama-san. Why am I not surprised." She cocked her head, indicating along the hallway, in the direction that the Balaur guards always traveled in. "Let's go find our weapons, and start bashing some heads in."

Black nodded his head, and with a gesture, indicated she should lead the way.

* * *

The rain didn't let up, but it didn't grow any worse. It didn't matter either way, because Masayoshi was soaked through. He'd thought his armor would afford him some protection, but that was without the realization that he wasn't wearing a helmet, and the rain seemed to slide right down the back of his neck into the armor itself. Gotou had the thought to sling his shield off his back and carry it over his head, mitigating some of the damage.

They found the ruins with little difficulty. The ground still bore the scars from Gotou's fight with the PVPer, and small bits of debris littered the ground leading to its steps. Masayoshi slowed a little approaching it, but Gotou didn't, trotting past Masayoshi and up the steps to the relative shelter of the overhang. He lowered his shield with a sigh, snapping it back onto his back and rotating his arms, wincing slightly.

He stopped when he realized Masayoshi was looking at him, the tips of his ears pink. "Why are you standing in the rain, huh?" Gotou asked him, and Masayoshi blinked, looking up at the sky, then trotting forward to the cover that the ruins provided.

It was dark still - not the dark of night, but the dark grey gloom of an overcast sky, and an unending torrent of rain. Masayoshi ran his hand back through his hair, felt waterlogged and weighed down, in more ways than one. He made it a point to try not to look at Gotou, because he felt bad when he did, like just the act of looking at him was Not Allowed.

If Gotou didn't want ... then why had he kissed Masayoshi? Here, even, he'd kissed Masayoshi with no prompting from Masayoshi, sweat on his face and adrenaline throbbing in his veins. Masayoshi didn't understand how Gotou could be like that, could be lying in bed next to him, legs thrown over Masayoshi's sitting upright, naked together-

Masayoshi made a small noise, a squeak of an exhale, and Gotou looked over at him, expression concerned. "You okay, Masayoshi?" He turned so his torso faced Masayoshi, one hand on the hilt of his sword. "... why are you turning pink?"

"No reason," Masayoshi said, halberd in his hand. "We should ... we should check this out, right?"

"It's gonna be dark in there," Gotou said. He pushed his hand back through his hair, and Masayoshi Was Not Allowed to think that he looked good like that, wet and hair spiked funny from the movement. "I thought we'd just grab a torch, but the rain put a stop to that idea quick." He glanced over to Masayoshi. "Don't suppose gladiators have any magic skills that can cast light?"

Masayoshi shook his head. "I don't know any magic, just," he gestured a little with his halberd, and Gotou understood.

"I've got a couple of buffs, but nothing that lights the dark," Gotou said. "Midorikawa should have come with me, I bet he's got something."

Masayoshi's brow furrowed. "Well, if I'd known you _wanted_ Green to come with you," he said shortly. Gotou lifted his head and glanced at Masayoshi, curious.

"I didn't want _anyone_ to come with me," he reminded Masayoshi curtly.

Masayoshi looked away, resting the shaft of his halberd on his shoulder. "So we're stuck," he said. "This was a waste of time." _Just like his feelings for Gotou, it seemed._ Masayoshi shook his head sharply, scowling, and tried to banish the thought. _Gotou-san just needs time_ , he told himself firmly.

Gotou was staring at him. "It's not necessarily a waste of time," Gotou said slowly. "Masayoshi, are you okay? You're acting weird."

Masayoshi stomped the end of his halberd into the cracked stone. "I'm _fine_ ," he snapped, and refused to look Gotou in the face.

Gotou said, curtly, "fine." There was a moment of silence between them, and Masayoshi heaved a heavy sigh, on the cusp of apologizing when he realized that Gotou was no longer in the periphery of his vision. He jerked his head up, and realized with a start that Gotou had gone ahead without him, into the darkness of the main room of the temple ruin.

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, and hurried to catch up. "Gotou-san, I'm sorry-"

There was a moment of terror as Masayoshi stood in the open doorway of the ruin, but then as his eyes adjusted he saw Gotou in the dimness, crouched, picking up pieces of wood. "I'm sorry," Masayoshi said again, breathing closer to normal.

"For what?" Gotou held up a piece of wood, and tested it with his hand. He held it out to Masayoshi. "This feel dry to you?"

"For ..." Masayoshi took the wood in his free hand, feeling how heavy it was. "For being rude, it's not like me to be short with you! It's inexcusable!"

"You're a human being, Masayoshi." Gotou wasn't looking at him, searching around for another piece of wood. "You're allowed to be pissed, okay? We just shouldn't be having this conversation when there's work to do."

"I'm not _pissed_ ," Masayoshi said.

"Not a discussion we should be having right now." Gotou held up another piece of wood and squinted at it.

"If anything _you're_ the one who's always pissed, and sulking," Masayoshi said. "And you brought up, you brought up _her_ , I thought you were doing better-"

Gotou stood up, suddenly. He half-turned and stared at Masayoshi. "We're done here," Gotou said quietly. He tossed the piece of driftwood back to the floor and turned away from Masayoshi. He took a deep breath and said something, which made the room light up for just a moment, showing the extent of the destruction - but Masayoshi wasn't paying attention, eyes wide and face gone slack, as Gotou teleported out of the ruin and left him alone.

* * *

It hadn't been the smartest idea he'd ever had, to use the teleport back to the obelisk he'd bound to from a place that wasn't on a _map_. But Gotou was tired, and angry beyond what he thought was possible, and Masayoshi - Masayoshi got under his fucking skin in a way he just couldn't even articulate, and he Was Not Dealing With This on top of _everything else_. The Flamengers didn't need him around, Masayoshi was a tank, they'd rescue Black and defeat Beyond Flamenco or whatever the hell the final boss battle would be, and they'd be able to log out finally, and he could kick Masayoshi out of his apartment and pretend that the fucking idiot had never, ever been in his life to begin with.

Except, it couldn't go like that.

He wasn't supposed to be aware of the inbetween-time, that blackness that existed between the spell being cast and his teleportation to where he had last bound his soul. And yet he was. Gotou existed in nothingness but he _existed_ , and that was _wrong._

Then the darkness tore, and a hand caught him out into the light, and Gotou thought again, this is _wrong._

* * *

"This is wrong," Ruby said as they rounded another corner. They'd been running through the brig for the last ten minutes, and hadn't met a single guard. The air was normal again, but ... no enemies. Not a single one. "You don't think that this is a sieged fortress, do you?" she asked as they dashed around another corner. Out of the prison area now, they'd found a stock room full of food, but no weapons, and no enemies either.

"It's not on the map," Black said.

"That doesn't mean it would be immune to sieges." Ruby nudged open a door and exhaled, relieved. "An armory. _Finally._ "

"Why would anyone siege a fortress not on the map," Black asked as he stepped into the armory behind her. It was mostly Balaur weaponry - immense swords and shields taller than them both, twisted, gnarled weapons whose ungainly construction belied their strengths. "It wouldn't affect the game's power balance."

"Except we exist between the game and the reality of this world," Ruby reminded him. "It may not be players sieging."

Black hesitated, his hands on a pair of over-large revolvers, whose holster he'd have to wrap around his tiny frame many times. Ruby had selected a pair of daggers whose blades were longer than her forearms. "Something big is happening," he said finally, feeling better with a weapon in hand."

"That's something that we can _both_ agree on," Ruby said. "If we can find our way out of the fortress, we can alert the others, and we can turn around and siege the _fuck_ out of whoever thought this was a brilliant idea."

Black nodded his head, and thought, _they should be here already._

* * *

"It doesn't look any different from any other fortress," Blue said, standing on the very edge of the plateau that overlooked the off-map area. This portion of the Abyss had several large chunks of land, plateaus of varying sizes and shape that some monsters roamed but were primarily arenas for PVP. However, over in an area that had been nothing but purple-and-red darkness was another large chunk of land, spinning in the aether, and on it, a fortress guarded by Balaur.

"Yes, except for the fact it's off the map," Green said. He stood back away from the edge, made nervous by the drop into nothingness. True, they had wings that could be called free at a moment's notice, but in the game metrics a fall into that space was an instant-death. Green wasn't certain if he would keep falling until he met with land, but wasn't eager to test that out.

Pink circled by overhead, before dropping the last few feet, her wings vanished into the aether, her pink patterned kimono fluttering around her as she landed in a three-point formation. "Nothing seems out of place," she said, back from her recon, running a wide perimeter around the area. "If I didn't know better, it's-"

"Just another fortress, I know, yes," Green said.

"It looks abandoned," Pink said, a little cross at Green talking over her. "There are no Balaur guards, despite the fortress marked with their army's crest."

That was not at all what Green expected her to say. "That's deeply unusual," he said, brow furrowed.

Pink nodded. "You're telling me? We can probably run right in."

Blue said, rocking on his heels. "He's moved."

Green and Pink both looked over to Blue, who glanced back over his shoulder at them. "He met Yellow, right? He probably figured it was time to pack his bags and find a new base, he knew we'd be breathing down his neck before too long."

"As much as I hate agreeing with Blue," Pink said. "I think he's on to something."

"Black could still be in there," Green said. "But I would say that the odds are more akin to 95% that our enemy moved his prisoners as well."

"One way to find out," Blue said, stepping off the tip of the plateau, his blue and violet wings spreading from his shoulders as he flew away.

"There is no use in telling this crowd to wait," Green said with a sigh, as Pink leaped into the air, her wings decorated and fairy-like, much shorter than the feathered wings that Blue and Green both had.

"We'll clear this place before our leader and his boytoy even have a chance to show up," she said, and flapped her wings once, before following after Blue.

"Yeah," Green said as he let loose his own wings with a sigh. "At least the odds of this being a trap are down to about forty-three percent, but that's still higher than I'm comfortable with."

"Can't hear you," Pink called faintly. "Gotta catch up, glasses!"

Green let out a little noise of irritation, and followed her.


	7. Chapter 7

Masayoshi's first impulse was to teleport back to _his_ bind point, to follow Gotou, to try to apologize immediately - he hadn't meant for any of this to go down the way it had, he was a colossal fuck-up and please, Gotou-san, don't be _angry_ \- but Masayoshi hesitated, hand in the air to call forth the binding spell. He didn't remember where Gotou had last bound - was it at the same obelisk as Masayoshi? What if he ended up in a different zone entirely? If Gotou logged out of the group chat ... there'd be no easy way to find him, at all.

He dropped his hand, and stood alone in the darkness, heart beating heavy in his chest.

He wasn't alone for long.

Masayoshi heard them coming before he saw them - from deeper within the darkness of the ruins, the light bouncing off of crumbled stone, a small orb of light leading the way for the two figures. Masayoshi switched his grip on the halberd to two-handed, stance spread as they emerged from around a pile of debris. The traditional game functions might be gone in the unmapped zones, but Masayoshi still had his skills and his gut sense, and his gut was telling him that this was _trouble._

They were the enemy race, the Asmodae - skin blue and hair fair, both small and slight of frame. Masayoshi knew that without his radar they hadn't been alerted to his presence yet, but at least one was a magic user since they had a light spell active. Uncertain of their level, he _might_ be able to take them ... but the niggling thought of, _what happens if you die off the mapped zone_ echoed in his head and he hesitated.

That hesitation would cost him - as they noticed him. Two female players, the one in the lead gave a shout of surprise. "Elyos!" she called, the light she was manipulating growing to show Masayoshi in a defensive position. She was dressed in a white dress, accented in blue, a different shade than her skin - and when she gestured, a harp appeared in her hand. The Asmo behind her was dressed in armor, although it was of the short-skirt, thigh-high boot variety. She had a battle-axe in her hands, meaning she was a warrior class, like he.

"Only one?" the warrior-class Asmo called, and Masayoshi's head cocked. They weren't supposed to be able to understand the enemy faction's words - they'd come through as gibberish when this was a game properly, but he could understand their chatter clear as day.

"I can't tell," the songweaver said, strumming her harp. "I'll lock him down for you, Mari-chan!"

Masayoshi blinked. "Wait," he said, as the warrior-class Asmo sprinted toward him, swinging her battle-axe. " _Mari-chan?"_

He didn't have but a moment to prepare, and without a shield he only had his halberd with which to block, hands spread on its shaft. The blade of the axe slammed into the metal shaft, the reverb numbing his hands even through his gauntlets. It caused the blade to embed, just a bit, and she turned, planting the heel of her boot into his chest and using him to free her axe.

 _It can't be._

"Root him!" the warrior-class Asmo yelled, and, yes, he _knew_ that voice, even if her skin was blue and her hair was closer to white than brown.

"Mari!" Masayoshi yelled. "It's _me!_ "

The songweaver - it had to be Moe, if Masayoshi had to guess - gestured at him, a blast of magic aimed his way. Masayoshi didn't have time to dodge or even attempt to block it - and with a pop, he was suddenly much shorter and tangled in place. _What_ , he tried to yell, but the word came out in a horrified squeak.

"The Elyos said my name," Mari said, axe held loosely in her hand. Masayoshi flailed his arms, and realized they were flippers. He held them in front of his face and gave an anxious honk. He was a _penguin._

"I love that spell," Moe said, bouncing closer to Mari, who had her axe pointed at Masayoshi, prepared to effectively end the encounter but knowing that Moe liked cooing over cute things. "Isn't he adorable? I love turning nasty Elyos into cute little penguins!"

Masayoshi hopped into the air, freed from the tangled web of restraint ... but still a penguin. He waved his flippers and honked again angrily. Mari cocked her head, and glanced to Moe. "Shouldn't he have turned back by now? I know you hate it when I kill them as penguins, so I'll wait, but..."

"The spell's cooldown is off," she said. "Yeah, he shouldn't be a penguin any more."

Masayoshi let off a long, angry noise. He turned around, but his halberd was gone too - caught under the same transformative spell. He hopped toward the exit, already figuring out that the spell's cooldown was affected by the unmapped zone - but Mari caught him by his feathered scruff and Masayoshi kicked his feet angrily, unable to do anything but squirm in Mari's grip. "Weird," Mari said. She held the kicking, squirming penguin out to Moe. "Want to keep him?"

"He's so cute!" Moe said cheerfully, taking Masayoshi-the-penguin from Mari and squishing him enthusiastically against her chest. "I'll keep him as a pet! I wonder if I can get an inventory pack for him, he's adorable."

Masayoshi thumped his head against Moe's shoulder and thought, _I am in so much trouble._

* * *

The fortress was completely abandoned. Black and Ruby found the exit to the main level, where they stood in the open air and aether of the Abyss, and not a single enemy had populated or shown their head. "It's all gone," Ruby reported, having run down to the main generator room, and not even finding clerics tending the shield generator. "The place is empty, no wonder our cells were unlocked.

"That begs the question as to why continue to hold us," Black said. "If they were just going to abandon us."

"I don't know about you, but I'm glad to be free, and armed again." Ruby patted the knives that sat at the small of her back, the hilts angled so she could easily unsheath and attack. "Now I just gotta find my friends, and we can get back to figuring out how to get home."

Black nodded his head curtly, glancing upward and spotting the unfolded wings of someone flying. He pulled his weapons free, prepared for attack, and Ruby did the same - but Black relaxed his stance as the figure hove into view, and managed to fail making a precise landing and instead slamming into one of the parapets. "Blue," Black said with sigh.

"More Flamengers?" Ruby said, not letting up on her stance.

"Black!" Pink said as she landed lightly, ignoring Ruby completely. "Looking cute!"

Black ignored her and looked to Green, who was just a bit behind Pink. "Everyone's gone," he said. "The fortress is abandoned."

Green looked around the open courtyard, with all the entrances that led down, deep into the fortress. "You're certain."

Black nodded, and Ruby shifted her stance a little, knives still held up and at the ready. "This is Flamenco Ruby," he said, nodding his head toward her as Blue jogged up to them, having recovered from his crash-landing.

"Is Leader here?" Blue asked.

Black glanced back at Blue, then shook his head negatively. "The energy barriers went down, and we escaped, but the place is empty. We haven't seen anyone else since you arrived."

"Guess it means the ruins were a dead end," Pink said. She inclined her head at Blue. "We can send Blue to go fetch them, maybe it'll scar him."

Green looked at Ruby. "You're one of the Flamenco Girls? You're here, as well?"

"All three of us," she reported. "But we're the only ones who seemed to be in-game. Everyone else we encounter player-wise is still an avatar, not a real person. Until I ran across you guys."

"So it's not just confined to our side," Green confirmed. "More data. Hm."

"Blue, go find Leader," Pink said, and shooed him.

Green held up his hand. "Wait," he said. "We need to wait for them to turn up in a mapped area, then we'll reconvene. Without the urgency of needing to rescue Black ... I don't know how we'll find Beyond Flamenco."

Black's eyes widened slightly. "Beyond Flamenco is behind this? Isn't he Masayoshi's evil twin?"

Ruby looked between Green and Black. "What?"

"I thought he was dead," Black said. "He's here, in-game?"

"So it seems." Green looked up into the purple-red aether of the Abyss. "Leader seems to think he's behind all this, so if we confront him, maybe we'll be able to log out and get home." He inclined his head out of the fortress. "Let's get back to Terminon, back to a mapped zone and see if he contacts us before the teleporters close down for the night."

Even as Green spoke, the fortress underneath their feet rumbled, and shook a little. Everyone looked down at their feet as the rumbling became stronger, and more pronounced.

"Well," Ruby said, blades in her hands again. " _That_ can't be good."

* * *

Masayoshi hung limp in Moe's arm as she lead the way through the cavernous ruin. The two Flamenco Girls hadn't spoken much since Mari had chosen another path, one that led deep into the ruin's core. He had _so_ many questions but no way to voice them, and he let out a long sigh, which sounded all the world like a squawk.

She was illuminating the path through a spell he did not know, it caused a small pixie-sized ball of light to flutter along ahead of them. The light was enough motion to trigger aggro targets, but they had not run across any enemies, although there had been several small rodent-like creatures who scurried out of the light and back into cracks in the walls.

This was just great. He was in an unmapped zone, out of chat, out of contact with Gotou, and stuck as a _penguin._ Masayoshi let out another annoyed noise, and Moe's arm tightened across his midsection. He honked again, quieter this time, and thought of how nice it would be for Gotou to arrive and rescue him. He'd be mocked mercilessly for being a penguin of course, but he'd take it, if only it mean that he was with Gotou again. He even take being yelled at, over this.

Mari huffed in exasperation behind Moe. "This is taking too long," she said finally, her voice echoing slightly in the half-buried tunnel. "Mizuki-chan's not going to be here."

"This is what she was investigating when she disappeared," Moe said, not raising her voice or showing any kind of irritation. "It's the best place to start, Mari-chan."

"'Start'? We've been walking these ruins for _days_ , and the only thing we found is an Elyos shit-head that you turned into a hugging pillow."

Masayoshi honked indignantly. _Who are you calling a shit-head?_

"He's not a shit-head, he's adorable," Moe said benevolently, hugging Masayoshi close. He struggled against her arms, watching as the little light-pixie's reach grew, as they exited the tunnel into another large, dark chamber. "Aren't you adorable?" She held him up so he could look at her face - despite the blue features, that looked exactly like Moe. Masayoshi sighed and hung limp in her hands, and a strange expression crossed Moe's face. She was looking at the air above Masayoshi's head. "Um, Mari-chan?"

Mari had come around Moe, battle axe in both hands as she looked around the much larger room. "Whew," she said. "This place smells like death!"

It did have a pungent odor to it, the scent of putrefaction in the air. Masayoshi kicked his feet again against the way Moe was holding him, wanting to be set down. He still had no access to any of his skills or abilities or even speech, but he was _not_ going to be hauled around like he was someone's plush toy. Especially not if Moe needed both hands for spell-casting.

"Mari-chan," Moe called again. "I think this is Hazama-kun."

Masayoshi abruptly stopped kicking his legs and stared at her. _How...?_

Mari half-turned and shot Moe a look of disbelief. "Samumenco isn't gonna play games like this, he's too busy fucking his roommate."

Masayoshi let out the loudest honking noise he could muster, followed by a series of squawks. He flapped his flippers uselessly and kicked and struggled against Moe's hands again. "His username is Flamenred," she reported.

"Fanboy," Mari said.

Moe turned him around and held him out at Mari. "Tell her you're Hazama-kun," she instructed.

Masayoshi felt like a dog told to perform a trick. He did it anyway, squawking the approximate amount of syllables that added up to _I-am-Hazama-Masayoshi!_

There was a moment of silence after Masayoshi's last squawk echoed in the large, dark chamber. "Good going, Moe," Mari said. "You turned Samumenco into a penguin."

* * *

Gotou's head was throbbing in time to the beat of an invisible marching band, its percussion line stomping around somewhere behind his left temple. He groaned but didn't open his eyes right away, because the last thing he remembered was teleporting back to a resurrection obelisk and he had the bad feeling that he was not going to be anywhere near one.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Gotou-san," Masayoshi's voice said, and Gotou's head throbbed a little more, and he squinted open his eyes finally. Masayoshi was leaning over him, a slightly-concerned expression on his face. Gotou raised one hand and settled it over his eyes, that small flame of anger still flickering underneath his ribcage. "I'm still mad at you," he said softly, but not feeling it.

Masayoshi's voice changed as he spoke, settled into something familiar and not all the same. "Are you sure it's me you're mad at?"

Gotou's hand came flying off his eyes, and he tried to surge upright into a seated position at the same time. The face was Masayoshi's - the eyes, the nose, the grin - but not that voice, and not that expression. His quick movement made the room spin a bit and he caught his head with both hands and groaned, and could barely put up a resistance when a firm hand caught his shoulder and pressed him back down, onto his back.

"There, there," not-Masayoshi said, a tenderness in his voice that felt more mocking than not. "Not too quickly, Gotou-san, being pulled from the aether stream like that can really make one come apart."

"You did this," Gotou said, eyes flying open. He struggled to get upright again, but not-Masayoshi kept him down with that single hand, sitting at Gotou's side, looking somewhere between amused and satisfied.

"Of course I did," not-Masayoshi said. "I _am_ this world, I can do whatever I please inside and outside its rules." Gotou glared up at his face, Masayoshi's and not, and the up past it, toward the arch of the room. The walls, that he could see, were crumbling stone, lit in shades of red and purple coming from the center of the room. Gotou twisted his head, looked past not-Masayoshi, and saw the glimmering orb in the center of the room.

"What is _that_ ," he asked, voice hoarse. It was purple at its core, red and black veins of light skittering across its surface. It was easily the size of a small car, and suspended in a beam of brilliant white light.

"That," not-Masayoshi glanced over his shoulder at the throbbing ball of light, "is the thing that separates fantasy from reality." He grinned a little, a scary, unhinged smile that melted into something akin to caring as he looked back at Gotou. "It's the heart of Siel."

Gotou closed his eyes. He wasn't sure if that was supposed to mean anything to him, but looking directly at the orb had only amplified his pounding head. "It was a stupid thing to grab me," he said instead, eyes squeezed closed. "Once Masayoshi finds out-" He would come, he would stomp this not-Masayoshi's face into the floor and Gotou would cheer him on, if he couldn't help do it himself.

"Ah," not-Masayoshi said. "You speak as if brother knows your whereabouts. I grabbed you from the aether stream, dear Gotou-san. He thinks you returned to your bind point cursing his name."

"What is the point of all this?" Gotou said finally. "You said you wanted to get revenge on Masayoshi, how is this-"

Not-Masayoshi tilted his head, gaze still cast over his shoulder at the orb. "Soon it will be too late for any of you to stop me," he said, pleased with himself. "The gamemakers cursed this world with a cataclysm to create chaos, and I shall bring it a cataclysm to cleanse the world and make it anew."

"With you as its one true leader, I'm sure," Gotou said derisively. His head was still pounding, but not-Masayoshi no longer had his hand on Gotou's shoulder, so he sat up slowly. He was lying on the floor, at the top of some stairs that encircled the glowing orb.

"Hardly." Not-Masayoshi turned around completely. "I shall be a small, noble adventurer, same as yourself. The cataclysm will rob me of my power, but it will also grant me life again." He was focused on the orb, not looking at Gotou. "Real life, not as zeros, and ones."

Gotou stared at him, silent. "I am what you would call a backup copy," not-Masayoshi said. "A virtualized version of the interface of From Beyond. I was uploaded to the internet before my death, and I found as close to physical form here, in the world of this game."

"You were the one who sent the Flamengers the email with the free invite codes," Gotou said, realization dawning.

"I am lonely, in this world - the sole thing that belongs to it and not its programming." Not-Masayoshi looked soft and vulnerable for a moment, then cocked his head. "But not for much longer. When the heart detonates, it will destroy the servers, and all who are logged in will become part of this game forever."

* * *

The rumble started soft and low, beneath their feet. Mari gripped her axe tighter, as Masayoshi struggled still in Moe's arms. "Shush, hush," Moe chided him. "It's more efficient for me to carry you."

"What is _that_?" Mari asked, as the ground shifted slightly under their feet. There was something in the air, heavy and electric, but it didn't weigh them down, it almost made them feel lighter, more buoyant.

"Aether," Moe said, her hair standing almost on end. "An excess of it, my reserves are full." She half-turned, on her toes, her magical light flying brightly in front of her. Masayoshi flapped his flippers in that direction as well, whatever was going on, it was originating from the source of the aether. "Hazama-kun wants to go that way."

"Of course he does, he runs toward danger and not away." Mari hadn't moved yet - then she nodded her head. "Okay, we'll go. Can't have Samumenco the Penguin showing us up now, can we?"

Masayoshi wished his tongue was long enough to stick out at her in aggravation, he flapped his flippers harder and wished that whatever he was turned into was not as useless as a penguin.

* * *

The rumbling had not ceased, in the Abyss. However, a bright light had emerged from the center of the fortress, shooting diagonally toward the center of the Abyss. The Flamengers shielded their eyes from the brilliant glow - Ruby turned almost completely away. "What the hell is _that_?" she yelled, as the rumbling intensified.

"I don't know," Green yelled back, unable to be heard properly without raising his voice.

"I bet that whatever it is, Leader is at the center of it," Blue ran past them all, wings unfurled, and dove straight down into the source of the light itself, within the depth of the fortress.

"I bet he's right," Ruby said, unfurling her own black, tattered wings.

"I don't get paid enough for this," Pink said, following Ruby without hesitation.

Green and Black exchanged a wordless glance, and then followed.

* * *

"You can't do that," Gotou said, his mind not moving as fast as his mouth. His mouth had gone dry with the implication of those words. "All those people-"

"People with skillsets outside of what this world cultivates," not-Masayoshi said. "Skills that will be useful to help save this world, make it a place worth living in again." He tilted his head at Gotou, watched him.

"Don't do it," Gotous said. "I know you're lonely, I'll stay here with you, just _don't_ -" Gotou felt the physical reverb of those words in his throat, saw the way that not-Masayoshi stiffened, stared at him.

"You'd do that," he said, clearly unbelieving. "You'd stay here, in this world forever with _me_ , if I stop the destruction of the heart of Siel right now?"

"I," Gotou curled his fingers into a fist. "I _would_ , you have to promise to let everyone go, _everyone_ , even Masayoshi and the other Flamengers..."

Not-Masayoshi stood. "You'd be my lover, then?"

Gotou said softly, "if that's what it takes."

The words curled in his belly, vile and foul and still he spat them out without hesitation. Gotou tilted his chin defiantly to the not-Masayoshi, he would do whatever he had to, if it meant the others could be free, if it meant the others ... if it meant _Masayoshi_ would be safe from harm, safe from reprisal... Not-Masayoshi grabbed Gotou's jaw, jerking his head up violently, staring at him, his usual blue-grey eyes dark from the strange light cast by the heart.

"You'd do that," he said. "For me?"

And for a moment, for an instant, he heard Masayoshi's voice, bewildered and unsure, and Gotou closed his eyes tight. If he accepted this, if he released the others from his thrall, allowed them to log-out ... then the last time he would have ever heard _his_ Masayoshi's voice would have been in anger, in a fight... Gotou swallowed, eyes still closed. "Yes," he said, the word almost a whisper.

He jerked Gotou up, sharply, by his chin. Gotou gave a yelp of pain, felt his sword scrape the floor as he staggered upright, realized he was still _armed_ \- and not-Masayoshi recognized this at the same time, waved his hand again and grinned. "Go for your sword," he murmured. "Show me how you lie."

Not-Masayoshi was holding Gotou aloft now, by jaw and neck, the tips of his sabatons scrabbling for purchase on the stone floor. "If I agree," not-Masayoshi said thoughtfully, "we have to do something about this height, before I lose the opportunity."

"What," Gotou gasped, and not-Masayoshi slammed him back into the wall, one hand on his throat, the other on his head.

"This might hurt a little," he said, grinning as he spoke the words.

Gotou gave out a yell of surprise and pain as it shot through his entire being - and as his eyes rolled up in his head, he swore he saw a small _penguin_ come flying down one of the staircases that lined the room...

* * *

"Hazama-san!" Moe yelled as Masayoshi kicked himself free of her arms finally. They'd followed the flow of aether, it getting ever stronger until the small pixie-light was no longer needed. It winked out, and the strange purple-and-red illumination cast everything in bizarre shadow.

And then, Moe and Mari stood side-by-side in the entrance of the room, taking it all in, the glowing orb suspended in the center of the room, and Masayoshi holding Gotou by the throat against the wall.

"Okay, so," Mari said, axe in both hands. "You're _sure_ the penguin is Samumenco."

Masayoshi ignored them both, ignored everything, and made for Beyond Flamenco. He didn't move as fast as a penguin but dammit he _moved_ , and if there was one thing that Beyond Flamenco had not expected was to see a tiny, pissed penguin come hurtling directly at his face. _Leave Gotou-san alone!_

Masayoshi's words of course did not come out as words but as a syllable-less noise of rage. Beyond Flamenco released Gotou and he staggered back against the wall, barely alive _or_ awake. "What the _hell_ -" Beyond Flamenco yelled as Masayoshi bit and clawed at him, making it almost halfway up his armor before Beyond Flamenco caught him by a leg and pulled him off. Hung upside down and still spitting fury and fire at Beyond Flamenco, Masayoshi kicked and flailed with all his might.

"Is this," he held the penguin up in Moe's direction, "the best you can do, beastmaster?"

"Hey!" Mari said. She shifted her grip on her axe and moved to charge down the stairs, when Beyond Flamenco turned, and hurled Masayoshi-the-penguin toward the glowing, pulsing orb with all his strength. He hit the orb and vanished into its glow.

"No!" Moe shrieked.

Mari didn't even slow her pace, hands choked up on the axe as she ran, taking the steps three at a time. Beyond Flamenco shifted, and pulled the magnificent, giant two-handed sword from his back, prepared to meet the smaller warrior-class's swing with his weapon.

Her charge slammed her into him at full speed, and as he spun to take some of the brunt of the blow he missed the step, backing off into the air. He flailed backwards and Mari followed, brutal and unforgiving.

Moe flew down the steps and landed at Gotou's side. He had slid to a seated position, head back against the stone and eyes half open. "Gotou-kun!" she said, and waved her hand, pulling from her repertoire some healing spells, to try to bring him back to consciousness.

Beyond Flamenco yelled out, and suddenly, there were more people. Mari looked up, surprised, as four Elyos, and Mizuki dropped out of the air around her. "Mari!" Mizuki yelled, dropping behind her, and to the right. "They're on our side! It's-!"

"The Flamengers," Mari said, twirling her axe back with one hand. She grinned a sharp, wicked grin. "You're outnumbered now, asshole."

Beyond Flamenco tossed his arms out wide, sword held tight in one of them. "That's what _you_ think," he said. "I control this game right now, not _you_."

"Oh, good," the one wearing an assortment of blue-tinted armor said, from Mari's left. "Let's taunt the megalomaniac, see where _that_ gets us."

Beyond Flamenco took a step back, as an extraordinarily large creature materialized in the space between them, its head almost brushing the top of the chamber's ceiling.

"Now _that_ ," Mari said. "Is a fucking _dragon._ "

The one on Mari's right, who was wearing sorcerer robes and glasses, glanced at her. "You're a tank? Tanks to the front! Support, second line, we can bring this guy down, but we've got to cooperate!"

* * *

Masayoshi opened his eyes to bright, white light. It was coming in through stained glass all around him - colors of all sorts and shades decorated the floor, and dust motes danced in the air. He stuck his hand out - still wearing armor, but not his usual armor - and watched the colors slide across its surface. "Am I dead?" he asked aloud, his voice echoing in the chamber.

"Not quite." The voice was soft and feminine, and Masayoshi turned about, to see a woman clad in a hooded cloak, that covered a flowing white gown. He could not see her face, but could sense the softness there. She spread her hands wide. "You are outside the flow of the aether, daeva."

"Are you ..." Masayoshi hesitated. "The Will of the Universe?"

She laughed, her voice tinkling like little bells. "I am not," she said.

Masayoshi looked around - the chamber that they were in was circular. Bright light seemed to come from all directions, but so far as he could see, there was no exit nor entrance. "What am I doing here?"

"You are full of questions, proud daeva." She folded her hands, he cloak falling forward to cover her arms. "I have brought you here, to temper the cataclysm."

"Temper it... how?" Masayoshi turned toward the woman. "How do I stop it?"

"It cannot be stopped." She glanced to the floor - and Masayoshi looked down. The floor beneath his feet was translucent, he could see the strange orb throbbing and pulsing. "My heart beats its last. If it is allowed to stop, you and your friends will be free, but it will mean the death of this world and everyone in it."

Masayoshi wet his lips. "How do we keep it going, then?"

"It cannot keep going."

He jerked his head up and stared at her. "Then what was the point in bringing me here, to tell me that it's going to stop and the world is going to die?"

"Because," she said softly. "There is another way."

* * *

Gotou's eyes flew open when the dragon roared. He sat straight up, and the Asmo tending to his side leaped back. "Masayoshi," Gotou said, his voice a rasp, his head still pounding. The dragon roared again and they both felt the heat of its fire. "What-?"

"Hazama-kun is gone," Moe said, didn't elaborate. "There's a dragon, the others are fighting it."

Gotou slammed his hand into the wall beside himself, tried to push himself into a seated position. "What the fuck," he said, "Masayoshi is not _gone_ , he's-" Gotou swung his head around, looked at the chaos around the heart of Siel and did not see Masayoshi among it. "Where's Beyond Flamenco?" he hissed, cold fire in his belly.

She inclined her head, and Gotou turned and saw him, standing at the top of one of the staircases, sword before him, point in the rock and hands on its pommel, just watching. Gotou pulled himself to his feet. "He's _mine_ ," he said.

"You won't get around the dragon," Moe said.

"Watch me."

Gotou stood, closed his eyes, found his breath. The aether in the air made everything lighter, he felt his wings, and was airborne in an instant, shield on his arm, sword in the other. He made no secret of his approach, yelling his intent and he saw Beyond Flamenco jerk, sword in both hands as Gotou slammed into him at full speed.

They went tail over teakettle, over the edge of the staircase. Somehow Beyond Flamenco threw Gotou off before they both hit the floor, and Gotou half-landed on his shield, the impact jolting him to his core.

He barely had time to roll away, to his feet, as Beyond Flamenco's sword slammed into the rock behind him.

"We're gonna end this," Gotou said, staggered to his feet. He couldn't see or sense his HP bar any longer but he didn't _care_ , he was done, he was through, he was going to put his sword through this fake-Masayoshi's _heart._

But, Beyond Flamenco wasn't looking at him any longer. Gotou held his position but it wasn't a feint, and he turned as well, keeping his shield between him and Beyond Flamenco.

The entire room shook as the dragon fell, life depleted. It vanished into the aether seconds later - but that wasn't what had captivated Beyond Flamenco's attention either. He was staring at the heart of Siel, pulsing black and purple and red - and standing on it, his halberd in both hands, was Masayoshi.

"What," Beyond Flamenco said, his voice almost lost among the cacophany that had begun around the pulsing orb. "What are you _doing-?!"_

The sheer energy being emitted by the magical artifact was blowing his hair up, the cloth bits of his armor billowed up around him. Masayoshi was staring at Gotou, but whatever he was saying couldn't be heard over the rush of energy.

"Masayoshi!" Gotou yelled, turning his back on Beyond Flamenco, his anger forgotten, sheer terror in his voice. Masayoshi looked away from him, raised his halberd high, and slammed it into the orb beneath his feet.

It pulsed, and cracked, and white light seeped from the crack. He hefted his weapon and struck it again. It shuddered, and more white cracks appeared along its length, mixed with the black and the purple and the red. Masayoshi hesitated on the third swing, looked at Gotou again.

Gotou didn't hesitate further. He jumped the steps to the lower platform, dropped his shield behind him and ran at the orb, sword in both hands. When he struck it he felt the jolt, electric, shoot up his arms and down into him. A new crack appeared, where his sword impacted the magic.

Mari was beside him in an instant, her axe in both hands, the Flamengers only a few seconds behind. Without word or signal they all struck at the orb, until the entire thing glowed white-hot and bright, chasing the darkness from the room, swirling around them all. It was almost too bright to look at, and Gotou shielded his eyes with one hand, unable to make out Masayoshi any longer.

With a rush of energy and fire, the heart of Siel exploded.

* * *

"My thanks to you, kind daeva," the old farmhand said, leaning on his crutch, the summer sun beating down from above. In the clear blue sky the tower of Eternity could be seen, glimmering in the sunlight. Gotou straightened, wiping his dirty face with the towel slung around his neck, the hoe held tight in one hand. "I would not be able to get my work done today, without your assistance."

Gotou nodded his head, leaning the farming implement against the wooden fence and crouching down, to dump the pail of water he'd left there over his head. He blew out a breath in relief, the water, even lukewarm, felt fantastic. "When's lunch?" he asked.

"My wife should be finished shortly," the old farmer said. "We are forever in your debt."

He watched the old man shuffle toward the small farm house, and Gotou glanced back out at the hills that lead down into Tolbas. The farms here had begun to thrive once the Lephartists were driven from the coast, and even the frillnecks that terrorized travelers had been brought into line. All told, a decent amount of work from the daevas who lived here. Gotou smiled to himself a little, and patted his face dry.

So much had changed, in six months time. The war with the Asmodae had shifted - while there was still conflict between the two factions, they had a common enemy to combat, and the united front they had presented was also uniting the nations behind the scenes. Gotou looked up at the Tower of Eternity and wondered for the barest instant, his heart aching.

Masayoshi was gone.

Consumed by the energy of the heart of Siel. Returned to the aether, as the brigadier general had solemnly proclaimed. Another daeva lost, but in glorious battle to save them all. No one but the Flamengers, or the Flamenco Girls knew the truth, that the destruction of the heart of Siel was initiated by Masayoshi; that the even that had trapped all active players within the game, made this their new reality was caused by the honored dead.

Gotou couldn't bear to be around them any longer. The Flamengers, or the Flamenco Girls, or any reminders of Masayoshi. It tore him to shreds, so he wandered the land alone. He picked up odd jobs, helped out those who needed him, lent his sword to those in trouble and his labor to those who couldn't do it themselves. It was the only thing he _could_ do. Daeva could not die.

He thought about Masayoshi's face in that last instant before the light became to bright, the words mouthed, not heard.

 _I love you._

 _Wait for me._

After lunch he bid the couple farewell, his armor on again, sword at his side, shield on his back. He would keep moving. There was plenty of area yet to be explored, unmapped by previous mapmakers. Maybe he'd find Masayoshi there yet, waiting for him, sunny smile on his face. He'd keep looking. For as long as it took.


	8. Epilog

The day the Christmas trees went up in Sanctum, Gotou was running errands. He tended to avoid the Elyos capital city, because it was where most daeva camped out in the months following the great cataclysm, where they went from players behind screens and keyboard to actually inhabiting their avatars in Atreia. As such, it was always a busy place, but there were only a few places where he could pick up the items he needed from the Artisan's Guild, and the only place busier than the city suspended in the clouds was Oriel's main plaza.

It was just as busy as he'd expected, but this time it was something resembling organized chaos. Shugos of the Black Cloud Trader's guild were scurry around, organizing it with some of the larger legions that had formed in the wake of the cataclysm. Gotou kept off the main pavilions, but stopped along the outer edge to watch as several sorcerers and a few clerics tried to assist with the decoration of the tree, and it was more entertaining than anything he'd seen in a while.

It was weird, to think of Christmas. It would almost be three months since he last saw Masayoshi, illuminated by the light of Siel's heart. He rested his forearms on the intricate metal railing and stared at the tree, and forced himself to think of nothing but the tree, its thick green branches being decorated by small baubles and glittering aether-induced lights. It helped, whenever he thought of Masayoshi, to focus on something else - he'd learned that, because otherwise the grief might swallow his heart whole.

Gotou straightened and stepped away from the railing. Several female daeva ran by, in identical outfits dyed to match the upcoming celebration. Atreia had its own version of Christmas, Solorius, with its own customs and traditions - which just oh-so-nicely seemed to align with the holiday that the former players had brought with them from the real world.

It wasn't the "real" world, Gotou chided himself as he set out at a steady jog down the paved street. It was just another world, because now this one was just as real as any other.

The crowds thinned out further away from the central plaza area. Sanctum itself was a huge floating city, suspended on currents of aether far above the Elysian soil. The city was separated into three main parts, two of which were joined by a series of arching bridges in which the only thing that separated you from a nasty fall were a few, hip-height guardrails. All daevas had wings, large white feathered wings that could be summoned at a moment's notice, but the ability to sustain flight was based on the amount of aether in the air, and if there wasn't a lot, all you could do is glide on the thermals until you found a safe place to land.

Aether was untouchable, unknowable - yet they could sense it. Midorikawa - the former Flamen Green, and the head of the small yet widely-known Flamengers legion - had likened it to the Force, and Gotou had decided he accepted that comparison. After all, only daeva could use and manipulate it, and daeva were a such a small portion of the population that the regular people of the land (formerly, NPCs) saw them almost as gods.

The Artisans' Guild Hall was busier than Gotou expected, but not nearly as crowded as the central plaza. The building was huge, built to contain all the different crafting associations that existed within the realm, and as he turned down a hallway he was hit by the wave of heat that rolled out of the smithy's corner.

The regular bang of hammer and anvil echoed from the weaponsmithing area. Gotou stepped inside and was greeted by a wall of heat that made him break into a sweat instantly. "Anteros!" he yelled as he entered the room, and a few daeva who were learning the art of weapons crafting glanced over at him, before resuming their work.

Anteros was a short, squat daeva who had ascended after his hair had gone white. He was currently standing on a stool, arms folded as he shouted insults at a young daeva struggling to enchant a weapon. Gotou stayed a respectful distance back, one hand on the sack he wore over his shoulder, waiting to be acknowledged. "I've come for my weapon," Gotou said when Anteros finally glanced at him.

The old man nodded, and stepped away from the workstation, leaving the frustrated daeva to continue to work on his enchanting skill. "You're that templar lad," Anteros said, and Gotou nodded his head. "Ah, your sword."

"That, and I have some supplies I was asked to retrieve." Gotou pulled a short list from his bag and presented it to the master craftsman, who took it and glanced over it as he walked toward the end of the room. Gotou waited a moment before following, although he stopped by the unmanned desk.

"You aren't a smithy," he eyed Gotou. "Are you, son."

"No sir." Gotou said patiently. "Just running an errand, and checking on my weapon. It's made earning my keep a little difficult." His sword had shattered on the scales of an armored frillneck, a beast stronger than he'd expected to run across as he traveled in the unmapped territories. Purchasing things, such as weapons and armor had become far more difficult now that there were limited supplies and resources, so Gotou had opted to take the weapon for repair.

"I bet!" Anteros barked a laugh, and then waved his hand above his head as if using summoning magic. "I believe I had an apprentice working on it for you, let me call her." Even as he spoke, a blonde-haired female daeva appeared from around the row of workstations. "A templar best forges a templar's weapon," he said with another laugh. "Aariniel, have you finished with this daeva's weapon?"

The blonde daeva hesitated - she was carrying a shield, and she glanced to Gotou. Aariniel stared at him for a moment, and Gotou thought that maybe she blushed, although the heat of the smithy painted a rosy flush on everyone's face. "I can check," she said. "I think I finished smelting a sword yesterday, are you Gotou?"

"I am," Gotou said. He glanced to Anteros, who still held his list. Aariniel hefted the shield - a gorgeous round silver shield, emblazoned with a legion crest - onto the table, a finished product.

"I'll go check," she said, rubbing her shoulder and going back the way she'd come.

Shortly later Gotou was holding his sword - new and old at the same time, its blade freshly sharpened, polished and clean. It felt even better balanced in his hand, if that was possible, and lighter than a weapon should feel. "It's fantastic," he told the apprentice, and Aariniel did blush this time, as Gotou sheathed his weapon and buckled it about his waist.

With a heavy bag and a light money pouch, Gotou bid the crafting master farewell, and started back down toward the main part of the city at a much more sedate pace. He was on no one's timeframe but his own, and now that he had a weapon again he felt much more secure.

He passed a trio of Shugos, balanced atop each other in a Shugo ladder, trying to hang Solorius wreaths and swag along the main boulevard. Gotou smiled but didn't stop to watch, they were wobbling like something out of a cartoon, but determined. He was planning to stop by the trading post, where a large bulletin board sat. It was a place to pick up jobs and quests, as non-player characters ceased to exist. Most of the jobs were large ones, that would require top-ranked daeva in groups or legions to conquer, but every now and then Gotou could snatch a job that didn't require a large party to complete. He usually avoided the Sanctum trading post like the plague, but since he was already here...

Then Gotou saw a familiar tuft of tawny hair, spun gold by sunlight.

Gotou stopped walking mid-stream, causing several daeva loaded down with decorations to almost run into him. He ignored their indignant huffs as he half-turned, scanning the crowd but seeing nothing that popped out at him. Gotou's heart had leaped for a moment - but it had settled back into his chest. "He's dead," Gotou said quietly to himself, firmly. "One with the aether."

He bypassed the trading post, after all.

* * *

"Oh, thank you, kind daeva," the shopkeeper said. He couldn't have been older than Gotou, but the soot that smudged his face made him look worn and haggard and much, much older. He had been the one who had posted a job for a daeva, requesting supplies from Sanctum. The regular people of the land couldn't access the aether stream, and thus utilize the teleportation pads that would take them to Sanctum, so blacksmiths and artisans often had to rely on daeva to act as intermediaries, purchasing raw goods for them. "I've been waiting a long time for fresh supplies."

"Don't mention it," Gotou said, the sack he had worn over his shoulder now sitting on a low table in the open-air shop. He wasn't particularly fond of Heiron; the area had fallen even deeper into decay in the passing months as the routine of daeva completing quests trickled to a stop. However, it also meant that the people of the land who relied on daeva's intervention, were in far more need of his help than other areas.

There was also, often the threat of Asmodian interference. Rifts between the two halves of the world still opened with some regularity, and not everyone was as keen on the truce that had been issued. Being sniped and attacked by Asmodians was just a hazard of the job, and fortunately Gotou had gotten quite good at dealing with that. The shopkeeper thanked him again as he pocketed his reward money, and Gotou stepped out of the small building and into the dim light of mid-day.

He adjusted his sword at his side, his shield on his back. He wasn't wearing his heavy armor, that had been inventoried. He moved faster in leather armor - he wasn't raiding, or fighting in the front line battle against the Balaur, so the good, plate armor had been shelved for a lighter set. It was good for running errands in, and as long as he didn't get mobbed, he'd be fine. Gotou set off down along the footpath at a steady trot.

Gotou would do his best to avoid the combined Solorius/Christmas celebrations. They only reminded him of something he couldn't have, now - and it was all the better to stay out and away until they were through.

* * *

It was raining in the mountain pass that led down toward the fishing town of Jeiaparan Village. Gotou stopped under a rock shelf overhang to wait out the storm. The mountain passes were treacherous even when the weather was nice; shades of daeva cut down in battles past would haunt the paths, waiting to engage unwary travelers in mortal combat. Gotou tended to avoid this region for that very reason, he was terrified to see a familiar face among the legions of the dead.

The rain was cold and steady. Gotou sat down but did not make himself comfortable, the only concession was to unstrap his sword from his side and lay it across his lap. It was dangerous in these parts, and he did not like to be caught unawares.

Every now and then he'd see someone sprint past, trying to hurry through the deluge. He had nothing __but__ time, he'd wait out the rain.

A few travelers wearing cloaks headed through - they were in a hurry, clearly, but not sprinting at full-tilt. They were __dressed__ for inclement weather - heavy, fur-lined cloaks and weapons held at the ready. Gotou shifted slightly, rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. They didn't get really cold weather in Elysea, the snow and the winter settled on Asmodae. There was a very good chance that this was a band of Asmos. Whether or not they were hostile, that was another story.

They did not slow their pace, though, and passed without incident. Gotou let out the breath he was holding, but didn't move his hand from its resting position on the hilt of his sword.

* * *

Jeiaparan Village was not as busy as he'd expected it to be, but the rain had flushed out all but the most inspired to be present. Heiron didn't get much of a winter; just rain - and the steady downpour slowed finally to a consistent drizzle. Gotou stopped in the local tavern, hoping for a hot meal and maybe a bed for the evening. They were very full with travelers, and while a hot meal was a guarantee, a dry bed might be just a bit beyond their reach. "There's a loft," the harried wife of the tavern owner said. "And dry hay, that's all we have left." It would have to do.

The cloaked travelers sat on the floor nearest to the fireplace, hoods down and expressions guarded, and as Gotou had guessed, they mostly had blueish hue to their skin. The Elyos gave the small band of Asmos wide berth, and while there were no open hostilities at the moment, there was a general pall of unease. Gotou found an open seat at one of the long tables next to another hooded figure, and seated himself, keeping an eye on the Asmos.

"Solorius greetings," the hooded figure said, and Gotou grunted an acknowledgement. He didn't care to speak or be social any more than necessary; besides he had a strange feeling about the situation, and he'd rather concentrate on trying to decipher what the Asmodians were saying. "You know, they mean you no harm."

Gotou propped his chin in his hand. "You know that for certain, do you?" he said idly, turning to thank the Shugo who brought him a hot flagon of something mulled.

"I should hope so, I've been travelling with them since before the rift. They're just a group of adventurers wanting to see the other side of Atreia now that the armistice is in effect."

"Must be nice," Gotou murmured, although he had no desire to rift across the shattered world and explore the dark and wintery side that the Asmodians called home. "To be so bold as to waltz this deep into enemy territory."

"They aren't our enemies any longer, Gotou-san," the hooded figure said insistently.

"No, but centuries of conflict can't be undone in the span of weeks." Gotou folded his hands around the flagon, and felt a sudden chill wick down his spine. He glanced sharply at the figure. "What did you just call me, daeva?"

It had to have been a trick of hearing, the background chatter of the tavern, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with daeva and people of the land - but the way that the figure turned a little, away from him, shoulders stiff - maybe he hadn't __misheard.__

Gotou lunged to the side, grabbed the back of the hood and yanked. It cause a bit of a clatter as the figure yelped, and half-turned, one hand on his familiar tawny hair, grasping for his fallen hood, eyes wide in the torchlit tavern. Gotou stood abruptly, face pale and mouth open, his sudden movement strong enough to shift the bench he shared with the others in the tavern.

"Uh," Masayoshi said, hair curled long around his face and head. "Hello, Gotou-san."

* * *

It was still raining outside, the sky gone dark with twilight. It never got fully dark on this side of the world, twilight was the deepest night, although the heavy cloud cover ensured more darkness than night ever did. Gotou staggered out through the door of the tavern, one hand over his mouth, eyes wide and heart beating wildly. He felt like he was going to be sick, too hot and overheated, and he couldn't be in the stifling close quarters of the tavern a moment longer.

He stood away from the door, in the rain and stared out at nothing for a long moment. Then he half-turned and looked back at the tavern.

The hooded figure - __Masayoshi__ \- was standing in the doorway, under the small awning, hood still pulled down around his head and expression deeply concerned. His hair was longer even than Gotou remembered, still the same golden tawny shade, but he had it pulled back at the nape of his neck, although bangs still escaped and fluffed around his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't - you just walked into the tavern, I didn't expect to see you here, Gotou-san, and I-"

"You're __alive__ ," Gotou said, voice shaking. "You're, __you're alive.__ "

He felt like he was going to hyperventilate, all the emotions crushed into his chest expanding all at once. Gotou turned his face up to the sky, the cold rain keeping him grounded. He looked back to Masayoshi - who looked scared, frightened of him and his reaction, standing sopping wet out in the rain and Gotou wiped the rainwater from his eyes, gestured for Masayoshi to come over.

"Gotou-san-?" Masayoshi asked tentatively, stepping closer. He didn't pull his hood up, and the rainwater started matting his hair almost immediately.

"It's you," Gotou said. "It's really - it is really __you__ , right?" He stared at Masayoshi, and Masayoshi blinked at him, looked at him closely.

"You're taller than I remember your character being," Masayoshi said. He made a noise of surprise as Gotou caught him by the front of his cloak, pulled him in close and then set both his hands on Masayoshi's face to hold him still and kiss him.

"You're real," Gotou said again, voice breaking.

"I am," Masayoshi said, his hands on Gotou's face as well. "I am real, Gotou-san, and I won't leave you again."

* * *

Masayoshi made a small surprised noise when Gotou shoved him down into the hay. He'd dragged Masayoshi behind him, one hand tight in the front of his cloak, ensuring that he would not be able to slip off, to vanish into the night as if he never was. He'd pulled Masayoshi up the ladder into the loft above the stables, where the only sounds at the moment were the farm animals braying softly beneath.

He stared up at Gotou as Gotou straddled him. His eyes were tired but happy, and the light in the loft too dim to truly catch and show the color. That was okay, Gotou knew the color of his eyes well, had seen them in his dreams these many weeks, __months.__ "Where," Gotou said breathless, rainwater dripping from his hair and down his jaw. " _ _Where-?__ "

Gotou didn't have the breath to complete the question, because he kept dipping his head to kiss Masayoshi, to test that he was really, __really__ there, that this wasn't some fatigue-induced hallucination.

Masayoshi brushed his hand back through his hair and stared up at Gotou and smiled, laughed. "I missed you so much," he said, as Gotou rocked on his knees, small strands of hay sticking everywhere. "I love you, Gotou-san."

"Shut up," Gotou said, and kissed him again, fingers working on the clasp of Masayoshi's cloak.

He'd dreamed of this, so many times; admitting it finally in the open, knowing that what he felt here was reciprocated in kind, but Gotou's throat closed up and mouth was dry, and he couldn't form the words. Instead he worked at the fasteners and catches of Masayoshi's tunic - he wasn't wearing his armor either, and the clothing was foreign in origin. __Asmodian.__ He could only hope that he could convey the meaning now in other ways...

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, trying to stop Gotou's hands. "We should, we need to talk first-"

"Please," Gotou said, surprising himself at the way the word sounded coming from his throat. "I __need__ this, Masayoshi, __please__ -"

His kisses were flavored in desperation, now - and Masayoshi stopped trying to stop him, met his mouth with the same need, the same fury. Tunics and leggings and light armor were shed, dropped into the hay at their sides, and Masayoshi said, eyes wide, "I don't know how, I've never-" and Gotou kissed him to quiet again and led him.

And he'd never, either, with another man but he knew enough; and as Gotou sank down onto Masayoshi, his back arched and lips parted, he felt too full, stretched open, __complete.__

* * *

They listened to the rain pattering atop the roof, heavy now again. Masayoshi kept brushing his fingers through Gotou's hair, and Gotou could barely keep his eyes open. They hadn't spoken in a while, waiting for heartbeats to calm and sweat to dry.

"I didn't want to believe you were dead," Gotou said finally, his voice strange and raw. He had his head resting on Masayoshi's shoulder, and it felt warm and right. "Everyone kept telling me otherwise, and I ... I didn't want to believe them, __but__ -"

 _ _I saw you die.__

"I don't know what happened," Masayoshi said. "I woke up in the mountains, in cold and snow and my weapon was gone." He hesitated a moment. "It turned out I was in a very remote region of Asmodae, and ... Every time they killed me, I respawned in the mountains there, not back here."

Gotou's eyes opened, he started to sit up but Masayoshi held him tight, kept him down. "Every time they killed you," he said in a strangled tone. Masayoshi was a daeva, like he, which meant he'd respawn, he'd appear at a resurrection point but it didn't take away the pain of the death. A new rage lit in his stomach, he was going to find each and every Asmo who hurt Masayoshi and make them __regret__ it.

"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said softly. "I'm here now, I made it finally." They breathed in silence together, and Masayoshi said, "I'm sorry for what I said."

"For what?" Gotou said, confused, drowsy, content.

"We fought, before I..." Masayoshi's voice trailed off, and this time when Gotou tried to sit up Masayoshi let him. "I'm sorry."

"If anyone should be apologizing, it's me," Gotou said, looking down at Masayoshi. He leaned on his hand and rubbed his nose, felt how exhausted he was. "So let's just forget it, okay?"

"Yeah," Masayoshi said, as Gotou laid back down next to him. He smiled happily at Gotou, and Gotou couldn't contain himself and smiled back.

* * *

When Gotou next saw the Christmas tree, up in the central plaza of Sanctum, it was fully decorated and lit. There was a huge crowd of daevas, all sizes and colors crowded around a small platform, and an excited Shugo danced around, wearing a red fez and holding a matching red paper megaphone. He was yelling into it, and his voice reached Gotou as he took the long way round the plaza.

"The festival of Solorius is upon us, __nyerk!__ Wishes and dreams may all come true, daeva!"

Masayoshi glanced over at the plaza, slowing his pace just a little, but Gotou's hand tightened on his. Masayoshi looked to him and Gotou said, quietly, "I already got my wish."


End file.
